Billy Mason has worked at the Alcoa plant in Hampton, Va., for 23 years. Mason and his co-workers manufacture airplane parts by melting metal and pouring it into molds. Mason grinds and polishes the castings to create the finished parts. Before he began working at Alcoa, Mason spent four years in the Marines.

Far from achieving the American Dream, Mason and his co-workers have been falling behind. Today, he makes $2 an hour less in real wages than when he started 23 years ago. Not only is Mason's real income decreasing, but Alcoa no longer provides fully paid health care coverage. With decreased real wages and increased health care costs, Mason is making about $6,000 less per year in 2008 than he did in 1985.

Also, retirees' pensions benefits are not enough to live on, Mason says. When he started working at Alcoa, the workers worked overtime because they wanted to, but made enough money during their regular shift to afford a comfortable life. Now employees must work seven days a week just to make ends meet. “When my kids were small, my wife didn’t work,” says Mason. “I had more money in my pocket back then.”

To reverse the decline in their wages and gain the freedom to bargain for a better future, Mason and his co-workers began forming a union with the United Steelworkers. But the company fought back with a deluge of misinformation and intimidation. At the beginning of each shift, Mason says the company held stand-up meetings bashing the workers’ union. As the election approached, Mason says the company also began holding sit-down meetings every other day where “the suit and tie people” forced their propaganda against the union on the workers. Although two-thirds of the workers had signed cards authorizing the union as their bargaining agent, after two months of the campaign against their union, the workers lost the election.

Despite the loss, the workers continue to try to form a union, but the company stopped them from hand billing and interrogated workers. Mason’s manager told him he was “going to destroy the company” by supporting the union. After the election, Mason was suspended without pay for two weeks. The union took his case to the National Labor Relations Board and Mason was awarded his back pay. Despite an atmosphere of fear, Mason continues to organize and fight for the right to bargain for a better future for his family and his co-workers.

“I believe the rights we have were fought for, people shed blood and people died, and I’m not going to let those rights be taken away,” says Mason.