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 state—is 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.

Jeff Brown, one of Miller's construction electricians, left an open shop job in May and says, "It's one of the best moves I could have made." He says Miller is a great employer. He's learning a lot from his journeyman and looking forward to his union benefits kicking in.

Blackwater employs 23 IBEW members on multiple sites at Camp Lejeune. Nineteen are CE/CWs. The company has just moved into an office in New Bern. That's good news to a local with a future that once seemed dim.

Three other contractors are working with Local 495 to strengthen the signatory footprint in nonunion territory. Austin Electric—based in Norfolk, Va.—completed a long-term project at Camp Lejeune. White Electric, headquartered in Atlanta, completed a fire alarm project at the Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point and a sizeable contract at New Hanover Hospital in Wilmington. Chicago-based ABCO South remodeled several Food Lion supermarkets.

All three contractors participated in industry nights, conducting interview sessions with local electricians. Maurice praises the support of Ron Thoreson, assistant chapter manager of the Atlantic Coast Chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association for helping to organize the gatherings.

"We used to be a stronger local," says Harrison. That was until major industrial corporations—those that historically employed Local 495 members—turned work over to the nonunion subsidiaries of large contractors like Bechtel and Fluor-Daniels that had signatory relationships with the IBEW up north.

While the Small Works Agreement was originally envisioned as a way to land small commercial jobs, in the South—where union density can be nearly nonexistent—the concept has been applied to large-scale projects.

Harrison is amazed by the dynamic re-industrialization that offers potential for growing his local union. A firm from India has taken an option on land to build a $120 billion textile plant. While plans for the plant have been temporarily tabled, even the talk of such a project was unheard of a decade ago.

Local 495 is planning on reviving its apprenticeship program in the fall and is planning more industry nights to introduce nonunion electricians to the IBEW and signatory contractors looking to bid on new work like hospitals and medical offices.