Some union workers in the Quad Cities are helping a fellow worker who’s now in Iraq. Thirty-seven-year-old Rodney Spring, a member of the Illinois National Guard, is on active duty welding military equipment in Iraq. His co-workers back in the Quad Cities have raised five-hundred dollars to send 11 welding hoods and other supplies to him. Tom Verschoore, a member of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 25 in Rock Island, headed up the project. Verschoore found all sorts of willing contributors, including one man who said his brother-in-law was in Iraq.. “He gave me everything in his pocket,” Verschoore says. Spring’s wife, Connie, says her husband is touched. Connie Spring says it’s just wonderful to get the support of folks at home for her husband who’s overseas. Spring says the guys in her husband’s unit are “overwhelmed” by what people in the Quad Cities have been doing. For example, her daughter’s entire class is writing letters to all the members of her husband’s unit. Every one of the welding hoods sent to Spring has a union sticker on it to remind him that his union buddies back home are thinking of him and his fellow military welders.
