Rafael Roberson has always enjoyed working with his hands. After graduating from Dunbar Vocational High School, he took advantage of a community hiring program centered around a construction project at Rush Hospital. “About 150 people took an aptitude test. Only 22 of us passed,” he says. The program led him to Dawson Technical Institute, where he planned to specialize in carpentry. But a former teacher at Dunbar suggested he consider a career in plumbing. “He said I would be set for life,” Roberson says.
He took that teacher’s advice and went on to make the Dean’s List at Dawson Tech. He used his time in school to research what he needed to do to get his plumbing career off the ground. “I knew they weren’t going to be able to just put us in the union like that, so I wanted to figure out how to get in,” he says.
“I knew they weren’t going to be able to just put us in the union like that, so I wanted to figure out how to get in”
In 2008, the country was in a recession, and with many jobs on hold, Roberson was unsure if he would be able to find work right away. While he waited for a plumbing job to open up, he took an administrative position.“I wasn’t working hands-on or anything. I was mainly doing a lot of paperwork,” he says.
Meanwhile, two of Roberson’s Dawson Tech classmates had already been called by the union for plumbing jobs, leaving him to wonder why his phone wasn’t ringing as well. But what was bad luck for one of his friends, turned out to be an opportunity for him. “He failed the drug test, which left a position open,” Roberson says. A month later, Roberson was on the job site. “It was pure luck that I got that position,” he says.
Roberson says he’s grateful to his teacher for steering him towards plumbing, but he admits that the person who had the biggest impact on his career was someone he barely knew. After an arrest, Roberson struck up a conversation with a man who was being held with him. Roberson admired the man’s accessories and asked him how he made his money. “The first thing I did was ask him where he was hustling,” he says.
Roberson was surprised to learn that the man was a union carpenter who had been locked up for a bar fight. ”He said he’d made $70K in the previous year. That stuck with
me,” he says. After their conversation, Roberson promised himself that when he was released, he would set his sights on a union trade. “Now I tell people that the same money they make on the street in a week, I make on my paycheck after taxes. And I have a skill that’s always going to be needed,” he says.
But the job is not without its challenges, particularly for a Black man. Roberson says it’s common to experience racism on the job site. He does his best to stay positive and focused on his work in spite of any negativity he may experience. “You have to be strong and able to take a lot of stuff when you have this color skin,” he says. “Otherwise, you can end up losing your job.” In an industry that judges workers on productivity and skill, Roberson says there is pressure to go above and beyond to prove that he is just as qualified as his white counterparts. “There are people who don’t want me there in the first place, so I can’t give them any more ammunition,” he says. Listening to music helps him get through the day, and says Lil’ Baby, Nas, Jay-Z are among the artists he has on heavy rotation.
Looking to the future, Roberson wants to start his own company. “I want to be in control of my future and hopefully give someone else an opportunity,” he says. “I always say if I can go out and find a 6-figure paying job, anybody can do it.”