Carpenters Local Union 551

Carpenters Local Union 551
Pasadena, Texas — Houston Ship Channel
Local number	Local 551
Parent council	Southern Regional Council of Carpenters (SRCC)
International	United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBCJA)
Address	5500 Spencer Hwy, Suite 201, Pasadena, TX 77505
Phone	(713) 659-7851
Fax	(713) 659-4146
Email	Local551@southernrcc.org
Office hours	Monday–Friday, 7 a.m.–4 p.m.
Monthly meeting	Second Tuesday of the month, 6:00 p.m.
Territory	Pasadena and the Houston Ship Channel industrial corridor (Harris County, TX)
Industries served	Refineries, petrochemical plants, port and industrial construction, commercial buildout
Crafts	Carpenters, millwrights, interior systems, floor coverers, pile drivers (UBCJA crafts)
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Executive Summary

Carpenters Local Union 551 is a local union of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBCJA), affiliated through the Southern Regional Council of Carpenters (SRCC), serving carpenters, millwrights, and related crafts in Pasadena, Texas and the surrounding Houston Ship Channel industrial corridor. The local is headquartered at 5500 Spencer Highway, Suite 201, Pasadena, TX 77505 — phone (713) 659-7851.

Local 551's territory hosts one of the densest concentrations of refinery, petrochemical, and port construction work in North America. The Houston Ship Channel — established in 1914 and continually expanded — has more than 200 industrial facilities along a 50-mile inland waterway, including ExxonMobil Baytown, Shell Deer Park, LyondellBasell Channelview and Pasadena, INEOS Battleground, and dozens of petrochemical plants in Pasadena, Deer Park, La Porte, Baytown, and Channelview. Local 551 members have built and maintained this infrastructure for decades.

That work was one of the most asbestos-intensive work environments in the country through the peak exposure era (roughly 1945–1985). Refinery and petrochemical construction in the Ship Channel corridor used asbestos pipe insulation, gaskets, refractory, transite cladding, asbestos floor tile, and asbestos joint compound. Local 551 carpenters worked those jobsites alongside Pipefitters Local Union 211, Insulators Local 22, and Boilermakers Local 74 — and shared the same air during turnarounds, vessel entries, and new construction.

The local did not manufacture, specify, or purchase those products. Those decisions were made by contractors, plant operators, and manufacturers who knew of the hazard for decades before warning the trades. Today, retired Local 551 carpenters and their families are diagnosed with mesothelioma, asbestos-related lung cancer, and asbestosis at elevated rates reflecting that history — and compensation is available through asbestos bankruptcy trusts and product-manufacturer claims without suing the union, the contractor, or the refinery operator.

At-a-Glance

Carpenters Local 551 at a glance:

• Local 551 — an SRCC-affiliated UBCJA local union
• Hall: 5500 Spencer Highway, Suite 201, Pasadena, Texas 77505 — phone (713) 659-7851
• Territory: Pasadena and the Houston Ship Channel industrial corridor (Harris County)
• Parent council: Southern Regional Council of Carpenters, the UBCJA's eleven-state regional council
• Crafts represented: UBCJA's eight crafts, with heavy representation of carpenters, millwrights, interior systems, floor coverers, and pile drivers in the refinery and petrochemical sector
• Houston Ship Channel hosts 200+ industrial facilities — the densest concentration of refining and petrochemical infrastructure in North America
• Adjacent trades on Local 551 jobsites: Pipefitters Local Union 211, Insulators Local 22, and Boilermakers Local 74
• PMR 397 for carpenter mesothelioma — 34 to 50 times the general-population rate (NIOSH); see Carpenters for the full clinical record
• 20–50 year latency between first asbestos exposure and mesothelioma diagnosis
• $30+ billion remains in asbestos bankruptcy trusts paying claims without litigation

About Carpenters Local Union 551

Carpenters Local Union 551 is a chartered local of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBCJA), affiliated through the Southern Regional Council of Carpenters (SRCC) which administers UBCJA locals across eleven Southern states. Like other UBCJA locals, Local 551 represents members across the union's eight crafts — with the local's mix shaped by the heavy-industrial economy of its jurisdiction (heavy on carpenters, millwrights, interior systems, floor coverers, and pile drivers).

Local 551 operates from a union hall at 5500 Spencer Highway, Suite 201, Pasadena, Texas 77505 (email: Local551@southernrcc.org; fax: (713) 659-4146). The hall is open Monday–Friday, 7 a.m.–4 p.m., and the local holds its monthly membership meeting on the second Tuesday of each month at 6:00 p.m. Members and prospective members may call (713) 659-7851. The local handles day-to-day services for members — dispatch to contractor jobs, dues administration, grievance handling, and apprentice supervision — within its defined Pasadena/Ship Channel territory, drawing on SRCC regional training, organizing, and contract resources.

How Local 551 fits in the UBCJA structure

Local 551 sits at the bottom of the UBCJA's three-tier organizational model:

• UBCJA International — Sets union-wide policy; administers benefit funds and apprenticeship standards; based at 101 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC. General President Douglas J. McCarron has led the International since 1995. The UBCJA disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO in 2001 and operates as an independent international union.
• Southern Regional Council of Carpenters (SRCC) — UBCJA's regional council for eleven Southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas). Led by Executive Secretary-Treasurer and CEO Kavin Griffin. Coordinates training, organizing, and contract administration across the council's locals.
• Carpenters Local Union 551 — The member-facing local for Pasadena and the Houston Ship Channel corridor. Administers dispatch, dues, grievances, and apprentice supervision within its territory.

This structure means a Local 551 member benefits from international-scale apprenticeship and training (including the UBC International Training Center in Las Vegas), regional-scale contract negotiation and organizing (across the eleven SRCC states), and local-scale services (Pasadena hall).

Territory and jurisdiction: the Houston Ship Channel corridor

Local 551's jurisdiction is Pasadena and the Houston Ship Channel industrial corridor — a stretch of southeastern Harris County that constitutes one of the densest concentrations of refining, petrochemical, and port infrastructure in North America.

The Houston Ship Channel is a 50-mile inland waterway connecting the Port of Houston to Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Established in 1914 and continually deepened and widened since, the channel hosts more than 200 industrial facilities along its length and is the country's largest petrochemical-manufacturing corridor.

Pasadena, Texas (population approximately 155,000) sits directly on the Ship Channel between Houston and La Porte. The city is bracketed by — and overlapping with — major industrial concentrations:

• Pasadena itself hosts LyondellBasell Houston Refining, Shell Chemical, San Jacinto Methanol, and the Petrobras Pasadena refinery (now part of Chevron Pasadena Refining)
• Deer Park (immediately east of Pasadena) hosts the massive Shell Deer Park refinery and chemical complex and Rohm and Haas/Dow Chemical operations
• La Porte (just past Deer Park) hosts INEOS Battleground, the Goodyear Chemical plant, and Bayport petrochemical operations
• Channelview (across the channel) hosts LyondellBasell Channelview and Equistar Chemicals
• Baytown (a few miles north) hosts the ExxonMobil Baytown Refinery — one of the three largest refineries in the United States — and the ExxonMobil Baytown Olefins Plant

Local 551 carpenters have worked across this entire corridor — and routinely beyond it, into adjacent jurisdictions during major construction projects and turnarounds.

The Houston Ship Channel: America's asbestos-intensive industrial corridor

For roughly four decades — from World War II through the early 1980s — the Houston Ship Channel corridor consumed enormous quantities of asbestos-containing materials. The same factors that made the corridor a center of American industrial production also made it a center of asbestos exposure for the building trades that built and maintained the facilities.

Refineries and petrochemical plants used asbestos in five overlapping product categories: pipe insulation (Johns-Manville Thermobestos, Kaylo, and similar products on industrial steam and process piping); gaskets, packing, and refractory in valves, pumps, process heaters, and boilers; asbestos-cement (transite) for siding, ductwork, and industrial cladding; vinyl asbestos tile and mastic adhesives in control buildings, lab areas, and offices; and asbestos joint compound (3–15% chrysotile) in interior finishes through the 1970s.

Turnaround culture concentrated exposure. Refineries shut down periodically — typically every two to four years per unit — for major maintenance ("turnarounds") that brought hundreds of workers from every craft onto a single unit at once. Local 551 carpenters built and dismantled turnaround scaffolding, formed concrete pads for equipment changes, and worked shoulder-to-shoulder with insulators who were stripping and replacing pipe insulation. In confined turnaround spaces, asbestos fiber concentrations were documented at many times the modern OSHA limit.

Specific facilities where Local 551 members have worked

A Local 551 carpenter who worked a typical 30-year career almost certainly worked at multiple facilities in the Pasadena/Ship Channel corridor. Notable asbestos-era facilities within or adjacent to Local 551's jurisdiction include:

• Pasadena / Deer Park: LyondellBasell Houston Refining (formerly Lyondell-Citgo/ARCO/Sinclair); Shell Chemical Pasadena and the Shell Deer Park refinery/chemical complex; Crown Central Petroleum Pasadena (historical); Phillips 66 / Chevron Pasadena Refining (formerly Petrobras); Rohm and Haas Deer Park (now Dow); San Jacinto Methanol
• La Porte / Bayport: INEOS Battleground; Goodyear Chemical Houston; Bayport Industrial District petrochemical operations
• Channelview: LyondellBasell Channelview / Equistar Chemicals
• Baytown (frequent jobsite, just north of Local 551): ExxonMobil Baytown Refinery — one of the three largest in the United States — and the ExxonMobil Baytown Olefins Plant

This list is illustrative, not exhaustive. Court filings in asbestos litigation, OSHA inspection records, and EPA facility databases document asbestos use throughout these facilities during the peak exposure era.

Work practices and asbestos exposure: what Local 551 carpenters did

Local 551 carpenters generated asbestos exposure through six overlapping work categories specific to refinery and petrochemical construction:

• Concrete forming — building and stripping formwork for equipment pads, pipe-rack supports, and tank ring walls; era formwork included asbestos-containing caulks, form-panel treatments, and concrete additives.
• Scaffolding construction and dismantling — placed Local 551 carpenters directly adjacent to insulators stripping asbestos pipe lagging, among the highest-exposure situations in the building trades.
• Floor covering — VAT was standard in control rooms, lab buildings, and office areas through the 1970s; installation required cutting, fitting, and asbestos-containing mastic application.
• Joint compound and interior buildout — asbestos-containing joint compound was standard through approximately 1977 in office buildings, control rooms, and maintenance buildings.
• Millwright equipment installation — installing pumps, turbines, compressors, and process equipment frequently lagged with asbestos insulation; installation work itself disturbed existing lagging.
• Pile driver and waterfront work — Port of Houston expansion projects, dock construction, and Bayport channel build-out, where asbestos was pervasive on adjacent shipboard piping.

For the full statistical record on carpenter asbestos disease — PMR 397, the 34–50× elevation, the 97% occupational attribution rate, and the Peto et al. odds-ratio data — see Carpenters.

Working alongside other trades

The Houston Ship Channel's turnaround model placed all skilled trades on the same site simultaneously. Local 551 carpenters routinely worked alongside members of three Gulf Coast locals whose own asbestos exposure histories are extensively documented:

• Pipefitters Local Union 211 — UA Pipefitters chartered 1949, headquartered in Deer Park; covers 60+ Southeast Texas counties. Pipefitters installed, repaired, and removed the asbestos pipe insulation that defined refinery exposure.
• Insulators Local 22 — Gulf Coast insulators; the trade most directly responsible for handling asbestos pipe and equipment insulation.
• Boilermakers Local 74 — Gulf Coast boilermakers; built, repaired, and demolished asbestos-lined boilers and pressure vessels.

A Local 551 carpenter building a temporary structure near a turnaround unit, framing a control building during new construction, or installing flooring in a refinery office breathed the same fibers as the pipefitters, insulators, and boilermakers working the same site. This is the bystander exposure pattern that puts Gulf Coast carpenters' mesothelioma rates in the same range as the directly insulating trades.

Compensation options for Local 551 members

A retired Local 551 carpenter — or a surviving family member — diagnosed with mesothelioma, asbestos-related lung cancer, or asbestosis has access to multiple compensation channels, none of which involve suing the union, the contractor, or the refinery operator.

Asbestos bankruptcy trust funds. More than 60 manufacturers of asbestos-containing joint compound, floor tile, transite, pipe insulation, gaskets, and refractory have entered bankruptcy and established trusts. Over $30 billion remains in these trusts. Local 551 retirees can typically document exposure to products covered by many of these trusts — the Johns-Manville Trust (pipe insulation), Owens Corning Fibreboard Trust, the United States Gypsum Trust ($3.95 billion — the largest single source for joint-compound claims), Babcock & Wilcox and Combustion Engineering Trusts (refinery boilers and refractory), and dozens of others.

Personal injury claims against solvent manufacturers. Companies that produced asbestos-containing products and remain solvent (or have liability insurance for the relevant historical period) can be sued in Texas civil court. Texas has a two-year personal-injury limitations period running from the date of mesothelioma diagnosis, plus a separate two-year limitations period for wrongful-death claims running from the date of death.

VA disability and DIC benefits. Local 551 members with U.S. military service — particularly Navy and Merchant Marine veterans who served as shipboard carpenters or millwrights — may qualify for 100% VA disability if mesothelioma is service-connected, plus Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) for surviving spouses.

A typical Local 551 retiree with confirmed mesothelioma and a documented multi-employer Ship Channel work history can recover $1 million to $2 million through the trust system alone, with additional recovery available from solvent-defendant lawsuits and, for veterans, ongoing VA benefits.

A note on Local 551 and Danziger & De Llano. Senior Client Advocate Larry Gates at Danziger & De Llano grew up in this jurisdiction. His father, Dan Gates, worked the Shell refinery in Pasadena, Texas and died of mesothelioma in 1999. Larry has spent his career helping Gulf Coast pipefitters, refinery workers, insulators, carpenters, and their families navigate the trust and litigation systems that exist precisely because of work histories like his father's. Local 551 members or family members who want to talk through options can reach the firm at (866) 222-9990 or at dandell.com.

Frequently asked questions

Was Local 551 responsible for asbestos exposure to its members? No. The local did not manufacture, sell, or specify asbestos-containing products. Liability rests with the manufacturers who made and sold asbestos pipe insulation, joint compound, floor tile, gaskets, and refractory knowing of the health risks — many of whom have since entered bankruptcy and established trusts. Local 551 members pursuing compensation are not suing their union.

I worked at multiple Ship Channel refineries — does that complicate a claim? A long career across multiple Ship Channel facilities typically strengthens a claim, because each facility used products from different manufacturers and exposure to a wider range of products qualifies the worker for a wider range of trust filings. A complete work history is the single most valuable document.

What if I never personally handled asbestos? Bystander exposure is a well-recognized exposure pathway. Fibers released by an insulator stripping pipe lagging on a turnaround are inhaled by every carpenter, pipefitter, electrician, and laborer in the area. You do not have to have personally handled asbestos to have a viable claim.

My father was a Local 551 carpenter who died years ago. Can the family still recover? In some circumstances, yes. Wrongful-death claims have a two-year statute of limitations in Texas running from the date of death; bankruptcy trust claims often remain available longer. A medical record showing mesothelioma or asbestos-related lung cancer as the cause of death is the starting point.

Resources for Local 551 members and retirees

• Local 551 hall — 5500 Spencer Highway, Suite 201, Pasadena, TX 77505; (713) 659-7851
• Southern Regional Council of Carpenters — parent regional council
• UBCJA International — parent international union
• Danziger & De Llano — Texas-based mesothelioma firm representing Gulf Coast carpenters, pipefitters, and refinery workers since 1996. Free case review at (866) 222-9990
• Larry Gates, Senior Client Advocate — D&D senior advocate with deep roots in the Gulf Coast refinery community
• Mesothelioma Lawyers Near Me — Texas — Houston, Pasadena, and Texas Gulf Coast resources
• Mesothelioma.net — Refinery Workers — asbestos exposure profile for refinery construction and maintenance trades

Related Pages

• Southern Regional Council of Carpenters — UBCJA regional council; Local 551's parent council
• United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America — UBCJA International
• Carpenters — full clinical and occupational risk profile for the carpentry trade
• Pipefitters Local Union 211 — UA pipefitters local headquartered in Deer Park; frequent jobsite neighbor
• Insulators Local 22 — Gulf Coast insulators local
• Boilermakers Local 74 — Gulf Coast boilermakers local
• Oil Refinery Workers — exposure profile for refinery construction and maintenance trades
• Chemical Plant Workers — exposure profile for petrochemical-plant trades
• Asbestos Trust Funds — overview of the bankruptcy trust compensation system
• Mesothelioma Lawsuits — civil litigation against solvent asbestos product manufacturers
• Secondary Asbestos Exposure — take-home and family asbestos exposure pathways

⚠ Statute of Limitations Warning: Filing deadlines vary by state from 1-6 years from diagnosis. Texas allows 2 years from diagnosis or discovery. Contact an attorney immediately to preserve your rights.