Newton B. Jones

International President; The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers

Newton B. Jones serves as the international president of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, a position he has held since 2003, and is a vice president of the AFL-CIO. He also serves on the Governing Board of Presidents of the Building and Construction Trades Department and as a member of the Executive Council of the Metal Trades Department of the AFL-CIO.

Jones has been active in the union movement since he was a teenager, when he helped his father on a successful campaign to organize Jacksonville Shipyard in Jacksonville, Florida. The day after he turned 18, his father sent him to work as a Boilermaker. He quickly learned the trade and worked over the next 10 years as a high rigger, welder, tube roller and general mechanic. His work in the trade helped him pay for his college education.

Jones distinguished himself early in his career, becoming a field construction organizer for the Boilermakers in 1981. He was the principal architect of the Boilermakers’ innovative “Fight Back” construction organizing campaign strategy in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1986, he was appointed to serve as the Boilermakers’ director of organizing and communications. In his capacity as managing editor of the union’s newspaper, the Boilermaker Reporter, he redesigned the newspaper and modernized its production. He also was instrumental in bringing computerization to the union’s headquarters and, later, to many Boilermaker lodges.

Jones joined the union’s executive council in January of 1994, when he was elected by the international executive council to serve as vice president for the Boilermakers Southeast Section. Over the next several years, he worked to bring the construction Boilermaker wage and benefit package for that area out of a 13-year stagnation, negotiating one of the largest increases in the United States for the Boilermaker craft.

Jones served for two years during this period as a trustee on the Boilermaker-Blacksmith National Pension Board and the Boilermakers National Health & Welfare Board. In addition, he served on the board of trustees for Boilermaker-affiliated training, safety, and job-readiness trusts, including MOST, BNAP, and the Southeast Joint Apprenticeship Fund.

Jones was elected to serve as a director on the Brotherhood Bank and Trust Board of Directors in 2002, and he became chairman of the board in 2004. In 2008, the board of directors elected Jones to serve as the bank’s chief executive officer and its interim president. Jones also serves as director of the Materials Division of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM).

Born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1953, Jones attended the University of South Florida and Florida State University, where he majored in creative writing. In 1985 he graduated from the Harvard University Trade Union Program. Jones survives his late wife, Susannne Marie Mitchell, who he met at Florida State University, and he continues to raise their daughter, Shae Marie Jones, and guide their son, Cullen Mitchell Jones.

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