Leaders from across North America's labor movement came to Chicago with a unified message: This is labor's moment. Don't let it go to waste.

Citing friendly political allies and an unprecedented embrace of the union movement by young people, each speaker — starting with one of the IBEW's own, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler — implored delegates to reach out to unrepresented workers, to offer the opportunities and stability that come with a union contract and to grow the IBEW in ways that would have seemed impossible even a few years ago.

"I'm home," Portland, Ore., Local 125 member Liz Shuler told her IBEW siblings on May 10 in her first address to an International Convention since being named president of the AFL-CIO.

Shuler is the first woman and first IBEW member to hold the post in the federation's 66-year history. She served as the AFL-CIO's secretary-treasurer for 12 years before being named president by its executive council following the death of Richard Trumka in August 2021.

Shuler's father was a longtime Portland, Ore., Local 125 lineman at Portland General Electric, a job which provided dignity on the job and financial security for their family. Her mother worked for the company in a clerical job, but it was a nonunion position, which did not offer her near the respect or compensation.

That showed their daughter the power of union membership, and Liz Shuler joined Local 125 when hired as an organizer after graduating from college in 1992.

"Electricity is in my blood," she said. "What I experienced and what I saw over those years is what I carry with me every single day in my work across the labor movement. I saw the union difference. I lived it."

Shuler praised the IBEW for several initiatives, especially IBEW Strong for opening membership opportunities to traditionally underrepresented groups such as women, people of color and the LGBTQ community.

She added, however, that the brotherhood and all other unions need to seize the momentum of recent organizing wins at employers that conventional wisdom held couldn't be organized, such as Starbucks and Amazon. Those wins have largely been driven by younger workers.

"People are fed up with the corporate greed and they're fired up," Shuler said. "They're organizing unions and we have a wave of activism not seen in decades. Young people are stepping up to organize in places we haven't seen before."

And they're doing it in creative new ways, too.

"That should be our charge as activists and leaders in our movements," Shuler said. "Let's try new things. Let's be bold. Let's take some risks and not be held back by the way we used to do things or fearing that something might not work. When we try new things, we bring people in."

She also encouraged convention delegates and attendees to reach out and have more one-on-one conversations with members of their local unions. That is so critical during these times of hyper-partisanship and rampant disinformation, she said.

"We, the labor movement, are the only institution in the country that can actually bring people together," she said.

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond addressed delegates to the 40th International Convention, echoing the week's other impassioned calls that this moment is ripe for union growth.

"When we're together, there's nothing — nothing! — we can't do," Redmond said. "IBEW, you are members of a great union with a rich history of changing the lives of ordinary people. And you all have a role to play."

The AFL-CIO's first Black secretary-treasurer, he told of his parents — the children of sharecroppers — making the journey to South Side Chicago from Mississippi in search of a better life.

"My father took every kind of job he could find," he said. "My mother was a domestic worker. … No complaints. No excuses. We lived on food stamps. We didn't have health care, so we had to go to the free clinic.

"But we didn't know we were poor. The school used to collect money for the local orphanage and one time my brother came home and asked my mother for 25 cents to give to the poor folks. She said, 'You are the poor kids!'

"And we were," Redmond said. "But all that changed when my dad caught a break and got a good union job at the Reynolds aluminum mill.

"We had more security. More opportunity. We got off food stamps. We stopped going to the free clinic. Food on the table. Access to health care. My parents were able to save enough to purchase a home and they lived a solid middle-class life."

"My story is a story that is not different to many of you in this hall," he said. "It is a testimony to the power of holding a union card and working under a collective bargaining agreement.

"It is the story of the creation of the Black middle class. And the story of European immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island seeking a piece of this thing called the American Dream. The labor movement connects us all."

While many are forecasting economic and political headwinds, North America's Building Trades Unions President Sean McGarvey took an opportunity to celebrate.

Speaking to the IBEW's 40th International Convention, McGarvey recited an emphatic list of victories, hard work that paid off in jobs and market share, and predicted bright prospects for the North American trades worker.

McGarvey lauded unprecedented successes signing agreements: $80 billion with Amtrak, $30 billion in small modular reactors, $20 billion for carbon capture storage, and a first of its kind, $40 billion national offshore wind agreement.

The result, he said, is a generational opportunity to organize, including in communities that had been historically excluded from the trades.

"Because of your hard work at the grassroots level, we have registered an average of 75,000 new apprentices annually in the last five years — and that is just in the United States," he said. "Our Apprenticeship Readiness Programs have placed over 25,000 participants into a registered apprenticeship in just the last five years, with 80% being people of color and 25% being women."

One of Canada's top union leaders celebrated IBEW workers in a speech that highlighted the shared values of working people on both sides of the border.

"It's not power lines that keep the lights on. And it's not cables and electronic technology that keep communications flowing," said Larry Rosseau, executive vice president of the Canadian Labour Congress speaking on the fourth day of the 40th International Convention. "It is the hard work, dedication, devotion, and diligence of the members of the IBEW."

Rosseau reported on the state of politics in Canada, where political lines aren't so sharply drawn as in the U.S., and lauded the pro-worker majority in the House of Commons thanks to the alliance between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals and the New Democratic Party.

"I am very happy to say that this agreement will lead to the advancement of many of our key priorities," he said, listing "childcare, pharmacare, dental care, just transition legislation, anti-scab legislation — both for strikes and for lockouts — affordable housing, and the list goes on."

In Canada, Rosseau said the relationships that unions have built with the majority government and broad-based public support for their agenda will lead to more and stronger unions — to the betterment of everyone.

"As we grow our movement, our voice gets louder and we take up more space," he said. "This allows us to push a worker-centered agenda, benefitting all workers and their families.

"That's not socialism, my friends," Rosseau said. "It simply [means] that when you pave the way for workers to enter the middle class, that's when we get policies and services that help ensure we stay in the middle class."

International Secretary-Treasurer Emeritus Salvatore "Sam" Chilia spoke with authority when he told delegates and guests there's never been a better time to be an IBEW member.

"In my more than half a century in this union, I've seen the IBEW change a lot, change for the better," Chilia said in a video message on the convention's second afternoon. "We're a smarter, more engaged and a more inclusive IBEW than ever before. And that's a good thing."

While he couldn't make it to Chicago, he told delegates, "I am with you in spirit."

Connecting politics with organizing and collective bargaining, Chilia said, "We are very, very lucky today. We have an American president who is not afraid to say 'organized labor' or 'union.'

"President Biden stands with us shoulder to shoulder. The public-at-large is more supportive of unions than ever, so the opportunity to organize is greater than ever."

And when that window is open, he said, "you go through it, because when it shuts you don't want to be on the other side looking in. As someone who's dedicated a lot of sweat and tears into this union, let me say this: This is a historic moment for the IBEW. Don't let it pass us by."

Martin Helms, an inside journeyman wireman and former training director from Akron, Ohio, Local 306, addressed the convention on May 11 about the importance of opening doors for veterans. An active-duty U.S. National Guardsman, Helms last October became the first IBEW member to serve as executive director of Helmets to Hardhats, established by the NABTU in 2003 to connect those leaving military service with construction-industry careers

"When I returned home [from a deployment] … my plan was to go to school in the evening and work full-time during the day. Unfortunately, I was burning the candle at both ends," he said. Learning about H2H, "I was told that the building trades had registered apprenticeship opportunities, and … I went on to be a successful foreman and to complete my college education. This is what this Helmets to Hardhats program does: It changes lives."

With the clock ticking down to the U.S. presidential election in 2016, anxiety was high the last time an IBEW general counsel addressed the International Convention.

Speaker after speaker in St. Louis warned of the storm ahead if a fiercely anti-union candidate followed President Barack Obama into the White House.

"We know how that story ended," said General Counsel Jon Newman, whose law firm, Sherman Dunn, has represented the IBEW for 75 years. "Every single prediction, warning, and siren came true, and then some."

How things have changed, he told delegates on the final morning of the 40th International Convention, lauding their tireless efforts to elect President Joe Biden and ignite a new era for American workers and unions.

"It's a new day because politics matters when it comes to labor law," Newman said.

Starting with a 180-degree change at the National Labor Relations Board, he ran through some of the unprecedented advocacy for workers since Joe Biden took office in January 2021 and began building an administration that shares his values.

He also reminded his audience how precarious the progress is.

"The pro-labor developments of the last 16 months could vanish in a heartbeat depending upon the upcoming mid-term elections in November," he said. "I know you are tired of politics. We are all exhausted from it. It's hard to hear over and over that this is the most important election in your lifetime. I get it.

"But you know what? As Secretary-Treasurer Cooper said this week, Henry Miller sacrificed it all for the IBEW and died penniless. All we have to do is get out the vote and educate our members."