Utilities warned:
Prepare for shortages

Solar sector fuels IBEW jobs, training

IBEW helps Cedar Rapids rebound after flood

At Cornell, diversity succeeds, on-campus
and off

North of 49°
Saskatchewan Government Targets Workers’ Rights

Au nord du 49° parallèle
Les droits des travailleurs ciblés par le gouvernement de la Saskatchewan

(Editor’s note: This is the first in an occasional series about the job opportunities for IBEW members in a nuclear renaissance.)

Nate McGoldrick remembers spending summer days as a child riding his bike and playing soccer in his pastoral hometown of Stillman Valley, Ill. A two-hour drive west of Chicago, the town of 1,000 offers a slice of life familiar to many small Midwestern locales: champion high school football teams, traditional values and tight-knit families. McGoldrick, an ace athlete, once considered going to a nearby college in the hopes of getting a teaching degree and coaching soccer at Stillman Valley High School, where he graduated in 2009.

But while further contemplating career options, something else critical to the town drew his attention: the twin cooling towers of nearby Byron Nuclear Generating Station that loom like stout pillars against the otherwise flat horizon. For people old enough to remember the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, Byron can prompt suspicion among skeptics of the industry. But for 19-year-old McGoldrick and many of his peers, it has always simply been a benign part of the scenery.

"I know people in the past have been kind of afraid of nuclear, but it was just something that we grew up with and didn’t really think about in negative terms," said McGoldrick, the son of Downers Grove, Ill., Local 15 Vice President and Assistant Business Manager Terry McGoldrick. "I knew as a kid that it has been a good thing for our community, as far as jobs were concerned."

Hill: Charting a Course
Toward Cleaner Energy
Lee: Chinese Workers
Stand Up

American Pie’s Sliver;
Thanks for the Prayers;
NAFTA Repeal?;
No Lineman Listed?

Richard Dowling;
Clyde Bowden;
Gina P. Cooper;
Jack P. Anderson

Internet Organizing
Wins New Boston
Bargaining Unit

Teamwork Key to Apprentice’s Battlefield
and Career Success

May 2010

Musician Promotes Union Values on Stage and CD