October 2004

Greetings:

IVP Phil Flemming

I reported in the August edition of our “Coast to Coast Update” on our initiatives for our Strategic Plan formulated at the All Canada Progress Meeting in Calgary. One of the messages I received loud and clear was that we had to be more proactive by making our members and the public aware of the I.B.E.W. in Canada by promoting a more visible, positive image. The Media/Public Relations Committee is charged with formulating this objective into an action plan.

It seems that there are more unions with the same problem and consequently the Canadian Labour Congress through a Vector Survey (poll) in 2003 and a series of focus groups conducted in October, 2004 by Viewpoints Research has developed a Communications Strategy.

In the focus groups, when participants were asked to select images of an ideal union, they selected positive images of family, caring, security & protection and cooperation.

The perceived benefits of unions, identified by the participants, won’t surprise you with things like job security, protection from the arbitrary power of employers, better wages, pensions, health and dental, job safety, problem solving and wealth distribution. These issues will be messaged to union members and their families, non-union workers, ethnic and immigrant communities, youth, women, governments, news media and the business community.

The point of the exercise is to raise the profile and image of our labour movement as we identified the need that existed in the IBEW at the All Canada Progress Meeting.

The CLC paper concludes by saying: “The key to the success of any communication plan is not just to adopt it, but to implement it”. I think that can be said about all of our five initiatives that we adopted at the Progress Meeting.

Phil Flemming
International Vice President

The Lifelong Learning Symposium is a national-provincial sponsorship forum designed to enable Labour and Management participants who are responsible for training in the electrical construction and utilities industry, to pursue local training objectives within a broader context focusing on networking, information sharing, and best practices.

This event, which took place at the Kempenfelt Centre, Barrie, Ontario, on the weekend of October 29 to October 31, 2004, was hosted by two national sponsors, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, First District Canada, and the Canadian Electrical Contractors Association, and the provincial sponsor was the ECAO/IBEW Joint Electrical Promotion Plan. Registration for attendance included participants from Local Unions and JATCs from coast to coast, as well as other interested training stakeholders like provincial apprenticeship branches, community colleges, and HRSDC.

The conference was preceded with a tour of the IBEW Local Union 353 training centre co-hosted by Electrical & Utilities Safety Association. This allowed participants a first hand opportunity to identify and network regarding training requirements necessary to keep the IBEW membership on the leading edge of new industry technologies. Both the construction and utility groups held separate round table discussions regarding training.

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO, CLC

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