Anguish grows as thousands of IBEW journeymen and apprentices are still out of work. Some have exhausted unemployment benefits; others could soon.

Some unemployed journeymen and apprentices are now suggesting that they would be working today if only the Brotherhood hadn't agreed to negotiate alternate agreements and establish construction electrician and construction wireman classifications in their jurisdictions.

I understand the distress that comes from being out of work, but blaming unemployment on the efforts of our Brotherhood to establish job classifications to help us move into new sectors of the electrical construction market is just plain self-defeating.

Our nation's manufacturing-based economy—which provided thousands of big jobs for our members in steel mills and power plants—has changed. In this boom and bust economy it's more important than ever for our contractors to challenge their nonunion competitors in the small commercial and residential markets that many of our locals conceded years ago.

When our employers submit winning bids in those markets—using composite crews—we will gain more manhours, not just for CEs and CWs, but for journeymen and apprentices.

Can our alternate works agreements be abused? You bet they can. It takes strong local leaders and our members standing behind them to keep contractors honest.

Any new program will have growing pains, but those members who say that by negotiating alternate agreements, we are no better than the players in the nonunion sector of our trade are dead wrong. The IBEW is the only organization that exists solely to better wages and conditions for everyone in our craft.

Organizing the work goes hand-in-hand with organizing new members. A video posted on the IBEW Web site shows unemployed members in Jacksonville, Fla. continuing to organize despite the economic downturn.

A member commenting on the Jacksonville video on the IBEW's Facebook page states the case as well as I can: "When we have all of the electrical workers, or at least the biggest majority," writes the member, "the contractors will have to come to us ... not because they want to, but because they have to." That brother gets it.

When the International Trade Commission found China guilty of violating Section 421 of the Trade Act for swamping the United States with cheap tires, threatening the future of our domestic tire industry, President Obama was presented with the first major trade test of his administration.

Was his talk on the campaign trail about defending our existing trade laws and standing up for American manufacturing for real or just more Washington double talk?

Obama could have taken the easy route and let China continue to violate existing World Trade Organization rules by letting surging imports put a major domestic industry out of business.

But he didn't. Despite having more than enough on his legislative plate already, Obama slapped a 35 percent tariff on Chinese tire imports, hopefully slowing the surge and giving some relief to embattled rubber workers who have seen their industry decline by almost 30 percent in the last five years.

We do have laws that, on paper at least, uphold a modicum of safeguards against unfair trade. The problem is that there has been little political will to enforce them. When China was granted Permanent Normalized Trade Relations in 2000, Section 421—the anti-surge provision—was added to the Trade Act to help convince congressional representatives that free trade with China wouldn't lead to a massive wave of cheap imports.

But the Bush administration turned down the ITC's recommendation to invoke Section 421 four times to counter such surges during his time in office.

Both the Chinese government and the dogmatic free-trade pundits in Washington are now predicting an immediate trade war in the wake of Obama's decision. Fear-mongering and empty threats should have no role in real discussions on how to make our trade laws work for everyone.

At least four other nations have already adopted similar restrictions on Chinese imports without any drastic impact on the world economy. Rules set up to help protect workers and companies from unfair competition abroad should be taken seriously by lawmakers, and it's refreshing to finally have a president who's willing to make the tough calls to do so.