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Iowa Tree Trimmers Say "Union Yes"

July 18, 2008

Two weeks before Christmas last year, tree trimmer Mike Dorothy was working double time to clear fallen branches from damaged power lines after a storm in Iowa City, Iowa. The father of two was looking forward to that extra $600 in his last check before the holidays.

His employer, Wright Tree Service, only paid him for time-and-a-half.

“We were told we were going to get something, and they never delivered,” Dorothy said. “The guys from our site were working extra hard out in the cold.”

But Dorothy had been working next to other Wright employees who were members of Des Moines Local 55, who told the others about the better pay, benefits and bargaining power they enjoyed as an organized unit.

“That was when I knew I wanted to be a part of what they belonged to,” Dorothy said.

Word spread quickly among the workers at Dorothy’s home site in Fort Dodge, sparking a fast organizing campaign. Region 3 Lead Organizer Brian Heins said by the second meeting, 100 percent of the workers had signed union cards. The unit was solid even after the company brought in union-busters to spread anti-union sentiment.

“When the company heard that employees were talking about organizing, they immediately offered us minor wage increases to keep us open shop,” Dorothy said. “But we saw through that.”

A May National Labor Relations Board-supervised 10-5 vote brought 16 Wright employees into the union. Folded into the existing contract with the rest of Iowa’s Wright IBEW members, the new unit now enjoys the pay and benefits of their card-carrying peers, said Local 55 Business Manager Phil Stender. He praised the IBEW’s Membership Development Department’s resources and efforts for the win.

“I think the international organizing team is one of the best things in our union,” Stender said. “We wouldn’t have accomplished this victory without them.”

One of the largest line clearance companies in the U.S., Wright employs both union and nonunion workers. With the win at Fort Dodge, only two Wright units in the state now lack collective bargaining agreements with Local 55. Heins said he hopes that the momentum from the recent win will help the IBEW pick up the rest of Wright’s Iowa employees.

“I’m really hoping that word gets to those workers that things can be done – that we can organize them and that their quality of living can improve,” Heins said.

Dorothy agreed. As the first shop steward for his site, he said that the workers are already seeing positive changes.

“We hadn’t had a raise in three years,” he said. “Now we have higher hourly pay, better benefits, and we get treated with more respect. How can you say no to that?”

Home page photo used under a Creative Commons license from flickr.com user brutal.