If Monday’s general session speeches provided the inspiration for organizing, Tuesday brought delegates to the Membership Development Conference in Atlanta the tools to do the job.
Seminars Tuesday gave organizers the chance to sit in on either construction or professional and industrial seminars and workshops, which offered step-by-step game plans for organizers – from target assessment to labor law to filing a National Labor Relations Board petition for an election.
Adapting to changing markets and with a renewed push for new members, the IBEW has more members and more signatory contractors than last year, said Construction Organizing Director Kirk Brungard. By the end of this year, the union could exceed its previous record number of construction members, possibly by the end of the month.
Florida, the birthplace of the IBEW’s modern construction organizing program, has experienced a 14 percent increase in membership in the two years since it started. And in the eight-month surge since the beginning of the Carolinas campaign, membership is up 10 percent, Brungard said.
Anyone who needs a boost for organizing, he said, need only spend a week at a contractor blitz or attend an industry night. “You may even find the lingering spirit of your union’s forefathers,” Brungard said.
In a presentation on understanding the competition, Truland Systems Corp. Vice President Alan Linder spoke about what he learned during three recent years on the “dark side” as an executive at a nonunion construction company. He challenged conventional notions about the nonunion sector. Linder said the IBEW’s new construction electrician and construction wireman job classifications are improving the union’s ability to match the ratios of journeymen to helper the nonunion companies use.
Senior International Organizer Jim Rudicil gave an overview of construction organizing over the past couple decades. He discussed the early days of the Florida campaign, and the struggles from which the organizers learned. But those provided valuable experience they are taking on the road. In booming Nashville, construction membership is up 27 percent, thanks to the new job classifications, the small works agreement and innovative organizing tactics.
“We opened the doors of the IBEW to everybody,” Rudicil said. “I can feel the momentum in this room.”
International Organizers Duane Moore and Jeff Henderson gave some insight into pulling off successful worksite blitzes followed by industry night events – the modern take on job fairs, held at hotels, matching nonunion electricians with signatory contractors.
The last segment of the morning session was a question and answer format confronting the sometimes difficult relationship between membership development on one side and apprenticeship and national standards on the other. National Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee Executive Director Mike Callanan and Assistant Executive Director Rick Hecklinger answered questions from Construction and Maintenance Director Jerry Westerholm and Brungard, and then they opened microphones for questions from the floor, which mostly concerned new member qualifications.
Industrial and Professional Locals Seek to ‘Turn the Corner’
Professional and Industrial Organizing Director Brian Ahakuelo opened Tuesday’s Professional and Industrial seminars by referencing its theme, “Turning the Corner in 2007.”
“We have stopped the bleeding…We are now heading in the direction of success,” Ahakuelo said.
He reviewed with delegates the organizing victories in the last year, which have added hundreds of new “BA” members to the Brotherhood in every part of North America.
To build on those victories, Ahakuelo described the outline of an ambitious organizing policy that will call on all locals to develop and implement organizing plans for their area and industry. Locals will soon be receiving more detailed information on the program.
“This new program will enhance what we are currently doing and take us to the next level,” Ahakuelo said.
IBEW International President Edwin D. Hill then held an open question and answer session with delegates about the importance of industrial organizing and the challenges locals face.
“If we don’t build union density, we will disappear,” Hill said. Delegates offered suggestions to help with organizing, from using the Electrical Worker to get news of organizing victories out to locals, to having IBEW members talk to their neighbors and community about the union.
“The biggest salespeople for the IBEW are our members,” Hill said. “That’s what built the IBEW -- the brothers and sisters out in the field who talked up the union to their co-workers and their community.”
Research Department Director Jim Voye reviewed the many organizing resources available from the department. International Representative Shawn Reents described how corporate research is a vital tool for successful organizing in the 21st century. “We need the most sophisticated information available to win ... you can be sure that the other side is spending a lot of money researching us,” Reents said.
Reents used as an example the recent campaign at TXU in Texas, where sophisticated corporate research helped stop the outsourcing of IBEW jobs by the company.
In the afternoon, delegates attended a variety of workshops addressing practical issues surrounding organizing. Click here for a link to the workshop schedule.
