Story By Chester
Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 20:46:53 |
I am a union member. I was raised in a union family, in a union town. I was clothed, fed and educated on union wages. My father and his father before him were union members. Most of my extended family has made their living as members of either the trade unions or steelworker’s unions. My grandfather was a union organizer for the U.S.W.A. (back in the days when that meant bleeding and drawing blood).
Fourteen years ago I joined an I.B.E.W., Construction Local. I completed a five-year apprenticeship. I proudly served my union and it's signatory contractors as an Apprentice, Journeyman Wireman, General Foreman, Sub Foreman, Union Steward, N.J.A.T.C. instructor and also as a Union organizer. In 1996 I receive the Henry Miller Award and was recognized as “an outstanding member of the I.B.E.W.”
I have been well trained and took a very proactive approach to my apprenticeship. I consider myself a skilled electrician, a hard worker and a good union brother. I am writing this with the most sincere intentions you can imagine.
Brothers and Sisters, I am very concerned for the future of our organization. In the past several years I have seen a frightening and discouraging trend. Our local has lost considerable ground to our non-union competitors. In our jurisdiction the non union element has captured a large portion of the residential and commercial markets. And they are now moving into the industrial market as well. We have lost many schools and other government projects, including our County Courthouse, which is located just a few blocks from our union hall, to non union shops. The electricians who wired our Courthouse were the only non-union tradesmen on the job.
During these difficult times, when we should be tightening our ranks and working together - as good unions and families always do - to find the solutions to our problems, we are instead fighting, name-calling and threatening each other.
Why? Why are these things happening? No one seems to be asking this question, let alone trying to answer it. So I will offer my answers. Our problems are as follows;
Marketing failure. - As a local we have no real marketing strategy. We don't advertise, not in print or on radio or television. We don’t picket or handbill jobs or businesses. We don’t have a marketing department. Instead, we have taken electricians from our ranks - chosen mostly for political reasons - and are using them as “business reps,” salesmen, a vocation for which they have never been trained and at which they are failing miserably. No one in our local leadership seems to care. While many good electricians rot on the bench or travel the country looking for work, our “business reps.” play golf and attend banquets and seminars.
Labor Pool degradation. - In recent years our local has organized close to one hundred new members from our non-union competitors and from local trade schools. In many cases we have failed to properly test, train and "unionize" these organized members. We have swelled our membership with untrained, unskilled, dues paying "non union" workers. This lowering of our standards has damaged our credibility with our customers and has weakened our collective bargaining power. As I write this, I am once again unemployed - as are 235 other members of my local. (This number represents more than 40% of our membership.)
Referral procedure abuse. Our local union leaders have created a caste system within our "brotherhood,” in which an elite group of their friends, political lap dogs and contractor’s favorites receive job after job, while other members endure long periods of unemployment. Many members have exhausted their state unemployment compensation claims and their meager health benefits. Emboldened by years of getting away with this practice, our leaders have become blatant in their abuses, sending out their "boys" time after time from the bottom of the book either as General foremen, stewards, or as the possessors of some obscure “special skill.”
Individualism - The very antithesis of Unionism, the mentality of individualism is rampant in our local. Our leaders - Executive Board Members, Officers and Instructors continually abuse our referral procedure and our funds for their own gain. If any member dares to question any of their actions or motives, they are threatened, intimidated, and their reputations smeared.
Tyrannical Rule – There are some very poetic words in the Declaration of the I.B.E.W. “We refuse, and will always refuse, to condone or tolerate dictatorship or oppression of any kind.” I only wish these words were more than poetry. Our Business Managers and our International Officers rule with an iron fist and a calloused ear. They wield their power, the power over our livelihoods, and make major decisions without regard for the democratic process or the rule of law. As a perfect example, earlier this week, one of my dues paying, assessment paying, union brothers took the floor during the “good of the union” segment of our monthly Union meeting and attempted to openly discuss his concerns about the blatant abuses of our referral procedure (as listed above). He was immediately gavelled down by our president. He was told that, according to our contract, he is forbidden to discuss the referral procedure on the union meeting floor and that he must sit down. Brothers, how far do you think our organization would have progressed if Henry Miller or Samuel Gompers or any other of unionism’s great founding fathers had admonished the working man to “sit down, shut up, and do as you’re told”
Attrition - Many members of our local (more than sixty at my last count) have decided that they can no longer make their living by signing our referral book and have decided to seek other forms of employment. These men are leaving the trade and the local union, for which their predecessors have spilled their blood, because they can no longer support their families on the scraps, which must first fall from the tables of their non-union competitors and then from the tables of their “elitist” local union “brothers.” In one instance I was recently made aware of, our Vice President suggested to one of our members that he "should find another line of work" after the member conveyed his dire financial situation. A good friend of mine, and a long time union brother, was absent this week from our monthly "book signing" car pool because he was not able to take the day off from his new job as a truck driver. I myself am actively pursuing other interests and will most likely not be working as an electrician this time next year. I find it tragically ironic that I, along with many other union born and union bred members, am having to step aside and allow my local to be propagated by "organized" non-union members and by individualistic, "not very union" members and officers.
Lost Objectives The objectives of the IBEW, as defined in the constitution, specifically the pledge to “strive for a higher and higher standard of living for our members” have been lost somewhere along the way. Our contract wages have stagnated. Couple this the wage concessions many of our customers receive and with the wage supplement programs we’ve instituted for our contractors, in which we basically give them money to pay us with, we seem to be pursuing a “lower and lower” standard of living with both our wages and our health care. Another major (probably the major) objectives of trade unions was to give every man a sense of equality. Through collective bargaining unions sought to give every man a fair deal, an equal portion of the pie and equal working conditions. As I have described above, nothing could be further from the truth of how our referral book is administered. The unions have become what they beheld. They set out to end tyranny and establish equality, but our leaders have now become tyrants and cheats.
I think Bill Clinton makes this point very well in his recent autobiography My Life, when he quoted one of his college professors, Carroll Quigley;
“...he said that societies have to develop organized instruments to achieve their military, political, economic, social, religious and intellectual objectives. The problem, according to Quigley, is that all instruments eventually become institutionalized – that is vested interests more committed to preserving their own prerogatives than to meeting the needs for which they were created. Once this happens, change can come only through reform or circumvention of the institutions. If these fail, reaction and decline set in.”
Don’t let these things happen to your local. If you find a way to stem this tide, please let the rest of us know.
I wrote those two pages almost two years ago. Since then things have only gotten worse (much worse) for me and many others. Our referral procedure continues to be exploited and watered down. It is now legal, according to our contract, for contractors to choose any member (including fifth year apprentices) by name from anywhere on our referral book. Other unfair practices, while not yet legal, are also taking place. Here are just a few examples;
We have members, who have been referred out to one contractor, transferring to another contractor (and then back again) without ever being laid off or passing through our hall.
We have members, who have been referred out to the same contractor for many years who are now working partial weeks, or even sitting at home for several weeks at a time (Some of them are even collecting unemployment benefits) while they wait for a call (from the contractor) to go back to work. Our business Manager has been made aware of these abuses and has chosen to do nothing.
Our health and welfare program has been restructured. We now have “individual (there’s that word again) accounts.” The members who don’t receive much of the work will no longer be “carried” by those who do. Under our new system the elite members of our local will be able to afford a relatively good health care plan with eye and dental coverage and low co-pays. Other members will not be able to afford an the eye and dental plan and will have to pay large co-pays and deductibles. Soon, many of us will have no coverage at all. Our residential wireman will not be able to afford even the lowest coverage options, even if they work 50 weeks a year.
Many members continue to voice their opposition to the poor decisions that our leaders are making - and they continue to suffer for it. As for myself, I no longer dissent and I no longer attend our monthly meetings. Although, for more than ten years I rarely missed a meeting, I have not attended a single meeting for over a year now. I have come to realize that these meeting as a useless waste of my time and an unnecessary source of aggravation.
Since my last writing (two years ago) I have continued to work only sporadically. I have found some employment from other locals and have lived on the road, away from my family, for months at a time. Last August, after exhausting my state unemployment claim, and being unable to find work from any other area locals, I took a job as a cab driver for $75.00 a night. Then, a few months ago I began working with a non-union electrical contractor. The man I am working with is a relative of mine and a former a house wireman with our local. About a month ago I borrowed some money and bought into his company as a full partner. I am now earning a good living, saving for my families future and paying for a descent health care plan.
My partner and I have been in discussion with my Business Manager, President, Business Rep. and Organizer about this situation. We had met on several occasions and had numerous telephone conversations. Specifically, we were wanting to get my partner back into the I.B.E.W. (He was willing to take the Journeyman wireman’s exam an I am certain he would have passed it.) so we could become a signatory contractor.
Last week, as a total surprise to me, I was informed that charges have been filed against me by my Business Rep. This news was announced during our monthly union meeting and was relayed to me later that evening.
I am being asked to pay a fine, stop contracting electrical work, and return to the referral procedure as my sole source of electrical work. I will not do this. I cannot do this. My family, and what is best for them, is my number one priority. To that end, I have finally decided to sever the umbilical cord, which has held me to this abusive parent for far too long. After many years of trying to reform my local, I am now resorting to circumvention. I am going out on my own. I will accomplish the stated goals, which the IBEW has failed to accomplish. I will seek a higher and higher standard of living for myself. I have no intentions of ever being signatory to any union hall. You can label me a "rat” if you like. You can label me a "scab.” That’s fine. But most of all you can label me “Gone.”
I’d like to leave you with one more quote;
“Unions are big business, friend
and they’re going out like a dinosaur.
Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.
Bob Dylan, “Union Sundown” 1983
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