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June 2005 IBEW Journal
Long Island Local 25 members recently helped elect Steve Levy, the first Democratic Suffolk County Executive in years, only the second in the history of the county. The newly elected official attended a union meeting to present the membership with a photo of himself and the local’s pipe and drum band. The image has a place of pride over his office desk today.
Though the local union/local county politics alliance remains friendly, the 2003 election success masked a deeper institutional problem. Nonunion contractors were making inroads across the local’s two-county jurisdiction, a densely populated area with more people than the states of Maine and New Hampshire combined. Market share on the east end of Long Island was slipping. Two hundred members were on the out-of-work list. Tried and true union tactics like picketing and salting were no longer doing the job.
When Business Manager Don Fiore and the rest of the IBEW’s inside and outside construction local union business managers were summoned by International President Edwin D. Hill to a get-tough conference last summer in Lake Charles, Illinois, he was receptive to the message: a stagnant economy and hostile political climate are bad enough. But the IBEW’s own complacency could be the union’s worst enemy. Fiore returned to Long Island determined to reverse the slide.
 Organizer Joe Shanahan presents
Local 25’s new political organizing
program.
"If we are going to be successful at what we do, we have to change our ways, and everybody has to get involved," Fiore said, echoing the message President Hill brought to Illinois.
Fiore launched an unprecedented series of mandated "State of the Union" meetings that called each of the local’s 2,400 members to the union hall in shifts for a presentation over a period of several months. The meeting featured a video presentation of both President Hill’s opening remarks at Lake Charles and a motivational talk by famed college football coach Lou Holtz. What followed was part civics lesson and part organizing strategy session by Fiore and organizer Joe Shanahan. The pair took the spirit of President Hill’s message to the next step: laying out a practical program for regaining lost influence and market share through a crucial combination of attitude adjustment and grassroots political organizing.
Shanahan’s presentation started with a quick review of recent history. Two years ago, the local instituted a nonunion tracking system that sought to identify all of the nonunion construction projects underway in the jurisdiction. It worked "too well" Shanahan said: there were far more than leaders had anticipated. Then he went through the tactics and methods unions typically use to gain market share, salting, petitioning for National Labor Relations Board elections, filing complaints with the local district attorney, rallies and pickets.
Each has its pros and cons, but they do not compare with the potential benefits of members getting involved in their communities at the most basic level, because that is where projects percolate and develop. If developers attend civic association meetings to gain public support for their proposed projects, Local 25 members should be part of that process. Shanahan also asked members to identify themselves as members of church committees, school boards or fire departments to build on a new database for member mobilization.
 Riverhead Town Supervisor Philip Cardinale, second from left, greets Local 25 Business Manager Don Fiore, center, and organizers Joe Shanahan, Gene Parrington and Jim Wisdom at the opening of the local’s satellite office.
Over halfway into what will be more than 10 meetings, Local 25 leaders are already set to surpass their goal of signing up 100 member volunteers. They have doubled the size of their COPE committee and organizing for the next round of local elections has already begun. Signing up with town and county Democratic and Republican committees, the members plan to volunteer for upcoming campaigns. Becoming part of the local political process will allow them crucial early warning when a project is proposed.
"Once a contractor has signed a contract to do a job, it’s impossible to get them off," Shanahan said. "We want to be in the position of knowing the moment a developer comes into town hall with plans to build a project. If we have our members appointed to the planning board or zoning board, that will have a huge effect on what goes up union and what doesn’t."
Local 25 is not the only local to bring the lessons of Lake Charles home. Toledo Local 8 Business Manager Dennis Duffey said they have plans to bring members and contractors together for a half-day conference this summer. More than 2,300 members should hear the message that things are serious.
"I want everyone to get the same message—that we are all in this together," Duffey said. "We are in trouble and if we don’t do things differently, we are going to cease to exist as an organization. We are not as strong as we used to be. I can see it closing in on us."
Duffey called for a complete outside-the-box approach. "I look around my kitchen and we have dishwashers and microwaves, things we didn’t have 25 or 30 years ago," he said. "So we can continue to look at those bargaining agreements, jurisdiction and work rules the same as we did 25 years ago or we can change."
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