Golden Gate Bridge painters are winners of AFSCME’s Never Quit Service Award

When you’re trying to do a job hanging from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, you don’t want any distractions.

Not the fog or the rain or the 50-mile-an-hour winds. Not the perpetual movement of the bridge, which gets worse when a heavy truck drives by – when it can feel like a small earthquake. The containment in which you and your co-workers are suspended seems to be under constant assault.

To Joe De Gier, a bridge painter, and Javier Chavez, a bridge painter apprentice, these distractions are part of their daily routine. But they remain focused because their job is not just a job, it’s a calling.

“It’s something that I take pride in,” De Gier says, referring to his work as a bridge painter.

For their service to their community, Chavez and De Gier, who are members of AFSCME Council 57, are winners of our union’s Never Quit Service Award. The award recognizes public service workers who go above and beyond the call of duty to make their communities better.

“I like to say that I have a reasonable fear of heights, because I don’t like heights,” Chavez says. “But if I’m with people that know what they’re doing, and I’m wearing my equipment, then I have no problem.”

Watch De Gier and Chavez tell their story in their own words in the video below.

Know a co-worker who goes the extra mile to make their community better? Nominate them for AFSCME’s Never Quit Service Award.