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Tennessee Members Shine in Solar Panel Plant
June 2008, Electrical Worker

In the past 20 years, 119,000 IBEW manufacturing members have lost their jobs.

As delegates to May’s IBEW Telecommunications, Broadcasting and Manufacturing Conference gathered in Atlantic City in early May, they expressed their determination to fight to rebuild our nation’s industrial base. They agreed that, in addition to stopping bad trade deals, one of the keys to growth is “green” manufacturing—creating jobs in environmentally-advanced technologies to help restore the American Dream to working families.

Green jobs are no dream for members of Memphis, Tenn., Local 474, where 55 members at Sharp began producing photovoltaic panels in 2003. One of only a few unionized solar producers in the United States, Sharp now employs 190 members making solar panels. The plant is praised by environmentalists and studied by academics who recognize the facility’s progressive labor relations as one of its keys to success.

The 450-employee Sharp plant, which produced TV’s until production was outsourced to Mexico in 2000, also manufactures microwave ovens and copier toner. Japan-based Sharp has been in the solar market since 1963, but its sole U.S. involvement was a sales division in California until the solar product line opened in Memphis. The plant’s yearly panel output, for residential and commercial customers in the United States and Europe, creates 64 megawatts of potential power yearly, enough to supply 14,000 homes.

Sharp supplied panels to North America’s largest photovoltaic power system, installed by members of Las Vegas Local 357 outside Nellis Air Force Base. (See “IBEW Helps Air Force Harvest Solar Power,” The Electrical Worker, February, 2008).

George Sterzinger, director of Nevada Energy Independence Partners, a non-profit organization, worked with Las Vegas Local 357 on building a solar array at the union’s apprenticeship training center.

“We bought Sharp solar panels for Las Vegas precisely because they were domestic and unionized,” he says, adding that he is hopeful that the federal government will support domestic production and prevailing wages in renewable energy technologies. The alternative, he says, is that there will be more negative examples like the nonunion solar plant in Nevada operated by a Spain-based firm with all components made overseas.  “They are unionized in Spain, but not here,” says Sterzinger.

At the Sharp plant, workers solder silicon solar cells made in Japan into PVC panels installed in frames. The units are then inspected and moved into an oven for sealing. “It’s very high-tech, and we are excited because the market is looking good,” says Kenneth Ingram, Local 474’s assistant business manager, who formerly worked as a chief steward at Sharp.

“We haven’t arbitrated a grievance in over twelve years,” says Local 474 Business Manager Paul Shaffer. The plant’s grievance procedure is patterned after the Committee on Industrial Relations in the electrical construction industry. The local, encompassing inside and outside construction trades, municipal employees and workers at rural electric cooperatives, sits on a grievance review board composed of three Sharp managers and three bargaining unit representatives. The board, which began hearing cases in 2002, makes final and binding decisions on all grievances.

“On a scale of one to 10, our relationship with Local 474 is nine and a half,” says Sharp Vice President of Human Resources T.C. Jones, who expects the company to expand production in the solar energy division to meet growing needs.

In February, a tornado ripped through Sharp’s four-building complex, rendering the microwave facility inoperable. Plant workers were fearful that rumors—which had surfaced for years that the plant would be shut down—would now be realized. But the corporation’s executives in Japan demanded that the plant—the only domestic microwave production facility—be put back on line as soon as possible. “Due to the amazing efforts of managers and bargaining unit employees, the line was back up and running in a little over a week,” says Shaffer.

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