Sailors Union of the Pacific
The Sailors' Union of the Pacific was organized in 1885 — its website is Aero's job since 2001.
SUP represents active and retired merchant mariners who ship out through union halls in San Francisco, Seattle, Wilmington, and Honolulu, crewing the vessels that carry American cargo in peace and war. Aero rebuilt the union's site into a working communications hub and has kept it current ever since, from the monthly paper to election notices to the paperwork a sailor needs to go to sea.
A distributed membership, a site that buried the essentials.
SUP's members work at sea and check in from ports along the entire Pacific coast, which makes the website the union's most dependable channel. The old site made that channel unreliable. It sat on an aging platform where updates took hours instead of minutes, navigation obscured the documents and job information members came looking for, and the mobile experience lagged behind how sailors actually reach the internet. The staff knew exactly what needed to go out; the tooling was the bottleneck.
Union business, from headquarters to the fleet.
The site runs on Drupal, and SUP staff publish through it week in, week out, with Aero handling hosting, upkeep, and the changes that go beyond routine posting. In any given month, this is where the union:
Publish the paper
Each issue of West Coast Sailors, the union's monthly newspaper, goes up alongside the press statements and labor news members watch for.
Sign on new sailors
Prospective members find the application, credential requirements, and step-by-step guidance for getting a job through an SUP hiring hall.
Explain the benefits
The SUP Welfare Plan pages lay out counseling, retirement resources, and the employee assistance program in plain language.
Carry the advocacy
Dedicated pages track the Jones Act, cargo preference, and the Maritime Security Program, with coalition statements posted as they land.
Run election season
Nomination instructions, balloting deadlines, and coordinator contacts reach a membership that votes entirely by mail.
Keep the record
The constitution, delegate resources, and decades of union documents stay archived and reachable from any device.
A partnership judged by union standards.
The SUP has been in continuous operation since 1885, one of the oldest maritime unions in the world, and it judges its partners by the same measure it applies to itself. Aero has run the union's website for 25 years, through redesigns, a full rebuild, and the steady monthly rhythm of the paper, the notices, and the dispatch lists. An organization that survived Bloody Thursday does not keep a vendor around out of habit; it keeps the ones that show up.
