AFL-CIO Leadership Ticket Includes IBEW's Shuler

Seattle Local:
Apprentices Can Buoy Nation's Shipyards

Calif. Utility Commission OKs Major Solar Project

One Team with
One Mission

New Federal Employment Director Visits IBEW

Retooled Education Department Boosts
New Leaders' Skills

New York City Building Trades Sign Historic Agreement to Save Jobs

Texas Local Helps Expose Corrupt Contractors

North of 49°
Green Horizons
Emerge in the West

Au nord du 49° parallèle
Une émergence d'horizons verts dans l'Oust

Innovative Agreements Build Market Share in North Carolina

This is the first article in a series about how local unions in different regions are using a comprehensive strategy to build market share.

North Carolina's thick growth of furniture plants and textile mills was nearly clear cut a generation ago by outsourcing. Today, the Tar Heel state is on the rebound, ranked seventh in U.S. industrial growth, with $20 billion of construction contracts scheduled for 2009.

The IBEW—with historically low market share in the stateis aggressively competing with open shop contractors to lead the industrial revival.

The union's recovery program paves the way for signatory employers to compete with nonunion contractors by encouraging them to hire workers in the newer job classifications of construction wiremen and construction electricians. CE/CWs are paid less per hour than apprentices or journeymen, but maintain high productivity on the non-journey-level duties that they perform.

Neal Harrison, business manager of Wilmington Local 495, has no signatory contractors based in his jurisdiction and an apprenticeship program that has been dormant for several years. That could be changing.

Harrison and International Organizer Gary Maurice have been working with Blackwater Electric, based in Chesapeake, Va., and Miller Electric, from Jacksonville, Fla., to land military construction projects. The Pentagon's Base Realignment and Closure program is shifting more infrastructure to the Carolinas.

Miller Electric has put approximately 50 IBEW members—including 25 CE/CWs—to work building a new Spirit Aerospace parts manufacturing plant in Kinston. And the company is in the running for three substantial projects at the Camp Lejeune facility in Jacksonville.