July 2020
July Issue
Theresa Greenfield awoke to bright, sunny skies on June 3, 1988, roused her lineman husband, packed his lunch and saw him off to work.
Trenton, N.J., Local 269’s Ed Nowak is among the thousands of IBEW members who have stayed on the job as COVID-19 has spread across North America and around the world. But unlike most of his union brothers and sisters, Nowak found himself fighting the coronavirus pandemic on the other side of the planet.
July 10 is National Lineworker Appreciation Day, an occasion to celebrate the men and women who keep North America’s electricity running and to memorialize those who have been injured or killed doing their job.
One of the largest organizing victories in the South in recent years reached a crucial milestone when the members of Atlanta Local 1997 voted overwhelmingly to approve their first contract with Atlanta Gas Light.
IBEW leaders in Ohio and developers of a proposed wind farm in Lake Erie are asking members to contact the governor’s office to request his help in changing a decision made by a state board in charge of approving the $126 million project.
IBEW members and their families across the United States and Canada are coping with the health, stress and economic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis. The stories below are a snapshot of the early crisis for members in four states. They ran in the July issue of The Electrical Worker with a cover story on the challenges New York City members faced this spring as their home became the global center of the pandemic.
Crises are a calling for the brothers and sisters of New York City Local 3. They were on the front lines when the towers fell. When Hurricane Sandy wreaked destruction. When other states and nations have cried out for help after storms and earthquakes.
IBEW leaders in Ohio and developers of a proposed wind farm in Lake Erie are asking members to contact the governor’s office to request his help in changing a decision made by a state board in charge of approving the $126 million project.
June 2020
June Issue
The benefits of a prevailing wage extend beyond just pay and benefits, according to a study from the Illinois Economic Policy Institute. Prevailing wage laws also make it easier to get a piece of the American Dream.
Sean Egan, a member of Muskegon, Mich., Local 275, has been appointed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as Director of COVID-19 Workplace Safety.
Jake Hummel has been a longtime successful advocate for Missouri’s working people, so it came as no surprise when he was asked to assume the top post in the state’s labor movement.
By the numbers, there were seven pickup trucks, 30 deliveries, six food banks and $15,000 in cash donations to help feed the community that Chester, Pa., Local 654 has served proudly for 80 years.
Members of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Local 1133 perform maintenance work on the Royal Canadian Navy's most sophisticated vessels — and some are never quite sure where that responsibility will take them, or when.
Two IBEW locals in northern Ohio were honored in March for their work in helping to preserve nearly 4,300 nuclear energy jobs in the state.
The Veterans Electrical Entry Program recently graduated its second class, opening life-changing career opportunities for veterans and strengthening IBEW locals across the U.S.
After two weeks in the dusty, southwest corner of Angola helping to electrify a remote maternity hospital, Alex Alcantara was full of emotion as his "unbelievable trip" came to an end.
As temperatures continue to rise this summer, it’s important to remember to stay safe and avoid any heat-related illness.
For members of Cranbury, N.J., Local 94 working for the state’s largest utility, PSEG, safety is embedded into everything they do. And that commitment extends not only to working safely, but to coming up with innovative ideas to make the job even safer.
Louisville, Ky., is already famous for its contributions to the world of sports — think Louisville Slugger baseball bats, legendary boxer Muhammed Ali or the spectacle of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs. Now, with some help from the members of the city’s IBEW members at Local 369, professional soccer is set to join that distinguished list.
When representatives from the IBEW presented more than CA$250,000 to seven children’s hospitals across Canada, the charitable act brought closure to a turbulent chapter in the Canadian labour movement.
May 2020
May Issue
Cody Bryant felt a little out of place when the Tennessee General Assembly honored him and fellow Kingsport, Tenn., Local 934 members Rick Courtner and Mollie Ingle in February.
When Joseph Glynn saw that the Blue Angels flight path over Chicago would go over his union hall, he made sure to grab his camera before he went out to catch the show dedicated to honoring essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic.
Rene Mata is a San Diego Local 465 gas service technician, and for most of his 16-year career, the biggest threats on the job were gas leaks. Explosions are uncommon but perilous, and leaks must be addressed quickly.
Members of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Local 611, with help from a handful of travelers, have completed work on two hospitals to help deal with the coronavirus pandemic in the Southwest.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration released a new webpage at the end of May with guidance for construction employers and workers as states and municipalities relax restrictions put in place to stop the spread of COVID-19.
A century ago in Detroit, IBEW Local 58 members were locked in a bitter dispute with employers who wanted to slash workers’ pay from $1.25 an hour to $1 an hour.
Witness John Harriel began his testimony on Capitol Hill in the middle of his harrowing life story of gangs, prison, reform and ultimately service.
With personal protective equipment in short supply, a number of enterprising IBEW members have stepped up to make face shields and masks for health care workers with their personal 3D printers.
On the afternoon of March 11, CBS officials announced the immediate closing of the network’s Broadcast Center in New York after two employees were diagnosed with the coronavirus. The network’s flagship news program, “CBS Evening News,” was scheduled to air less than four hours later.
The havoc the coronavirus is wreaking on the entertainment industry was the focus of a national media call last week that included the impact on IBEW members in sports and news broadcasting, and how their union is fighting for them.
Across the United States, empty facilities are being converted into much-needed hospitals for patients suffering from the coronavirus. In Reno, Nev., members of Local 401 performed that critical work in an especially unique place – a parking garage.
By now, everyone understands the phrase “flatten the curve.”
Part of responding in an emergency is working though the crisis with what you have, even though that often looks nothing like what you need.
The Wisconsin State Fair Park outside Milwaukee has been converted into an alternative care facility to deal with the Coronavirus pandemic and Local 494 members were there to power it.
April 2020
April Issue
The Wisconsin State Fair Park outside Milwaukee has been converted into an alternative care facility to deal with the Coronavirus pandemic and Local 494 members were there to power it.
Most IBEW members in the union’s railroad branch have remained on the job since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, but the AFL-CIO says the U.S. is not doing nearly enough to keep the nation’s frontline transportation workers safe from this global pandemic.
Throughout its 124-year history, Syracuse, N.Y., Local 43 has had a tradition of giving back to the central New York communities it serves. So, when most of the area shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, its members figured out how to step up in a big way.
With help from some travelers, members of Long Island, N.Y., Local 25 are powering two overflow hospitals to deal with the demand from the Coronavirus pandemic.
For half a decade, the members of Hamilton, Ont., Local 105 made the Joseph Brant Hospital Foundation one of the main recipients of their charitable donations each year.
This week, union members across the world will come together to celebrate the lives of workers lost and to recommit to the fight to make safety priority No. 1 on the job.
From safeguarding members to community service, Los Angeles Local 11 is playing a leading role helping the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area respond to the COVID-19 crisis.
Linda Georgiu affectionately calls the clerical workers she represents at Windsor Regional Hospital and Windsor’s Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare in Ontario as “my girls.” Only two men are among the 548 members working at the two facilities.
The IBEW and the AFL-CIO on Wednesday announced an innovative partnership with former Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz aimed at protecting jobs while moving the U.S. toward a carbon-free energy future.
Members of Detroit Local 58 are providing critical power to two centers being repurposed as overflow hospitals to help combat the COVID-19 virus.
The Dubuque Area Labor Harvest sprung to life in the 1980s to help feed union members and their families in a city ravaged by recession and sky-high unemployment.
Several dozen IBEW utility members have been sequestered at their work sites in California and New York since early April to protect critical power infrastructure and personnel from the threat of COVID-19.
Few states have seen more devastation due to the COVID-19 pandemic than New Jersey. Not surprisingly, the IBEW and its local unions there stepped up to provide a huge assist to frontline healthcare workers.
Amanda Mertes was online exploring the shortage of personal protective equipment and the viability of cloth masks when she got a phone call that turned her curiosity into a mission.
IBEW locals across the country are pitching in to power the facilities being repurposed for production of much-needed ventilators to help with the growing Coronavirus pandemic.
As volunteers delivered care packages of food to Chicago Local 134 retirees and widows at the end of March, Elbert Walters said it was a little like “reverse trick-or-treat.”
Boston Local 103 has stepped up to help address the shortage of face masks needed to combat COVID-19.
Last week, Parliament passed and received royal assent on Bill C-13, “An Act respecting certain measures in response to COVID-19,” a relief package that will provide $2,000 a month through July for those who have lost their jobs or who are going unpaid as a direct result of the disease.
March 2020
March Issue
With the COVID-19 pandemic essentially closing the American economy, the House and the Senate sent an unprecedented $2 trillion bill to the White House, where the president signed it late Friday afternoon.
The IBEW-partnered National Lighting Bureau is offering free LED lights to remote COVID-19 testing sites being set up nationwide to help combat the global pandemic.
The IBEW has negotiated agreements with Verizon, AT&T and other companies that will provide telecommunications employee-members added flexibility in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.
After a coordinated response across North America’s Building Trades Unions, including hundreds of thousands of letters, phone calls and comments from union construction workers, on March 10 the Trump Administration backed off its plan to undermine the century-old construction apprenticeship system.
North America’s Building Trades Unions issued specific advice for construction industry employers to protect IBEW members and other construction professionals from spreading the virus that causes COVID-19.
Hundreds of IBEW members hired by CBS for the now-canceled NCAA men’s basketball tournament this month will still be paid thanks to the union’s whirlwind efforts to help protect workers from the financial fallout of the coronavirus crisis.
The uncertainty surrounding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been deeply unsettling to nearly every industry, and the IBEW and its partners at the National Electrical Contractors Association have signed an emergency agreement to help construction workers and contractors navigate these turbulent times.
President Trump’s 2021 budget cuts new ship construction by 20%, killing 10 new ships – some for this year – and putting thousands of shipyard jobs at risk, including many IBEW jobs. This is despite his promise only one year ago to increase the fleet by 30% by 2030.
The energy running through La Plata Electric Association in southwestern Colorado these days isn’t limited to the utility’s power lines.
Manchester, Maine, Local 1837 member Kevin O’Connell has been a lot of things throughout his career. Now he can add “member of the state House of Representatives” to his résumé.
This week we celebrate our sisters in the building trades who work side by side with our brothers to build our bridges, buildings, roads and more.
The IBEW's 2019 Photo Contest results are official, and thousands of you weighed in on IBEW.org, Instagram and Facebook.
With a significant victory in New England, the IBEW announced a new era in outside construction organizing.
February 2020
February Issue
In what has become a yearly tradition, IBEW members dominated the competition at the fourth annual Ideal National Championships, which draws union and nonunion electricians from across North America and is considered the top competition of its kind for inside wiremen.
A bill introduced late last month by Vermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders could cost tens of thousands of IBEW jobs and cripple a natural gas industry fueling job growth across the entire U.S.
On Feb. 5 — one day before 224 members of the U.S. House of Representatives from both parties voted to approve a bill to make it easier for working people to join labor unions — the White House issued a strongly worded statement opposing the measure.
The people who live among the lakes and forests in far northern Michigan are hardy people. Up at the northern end of Lakes Huron and Michigan, three and half hours north of Detroit, the winters are long, cold and dark.
The National Labor Relations Board is trying to kill a law unique to Oregon that prohibits employers from forcing workers to attend anti-union meetings, adding a state battle to its ferocious attacks on workers’ rights at the federal level.
Any IBEW member knows a career in the trades can be incredibly rewarding. Whether it’s a debt-free education, a paycheck that provides a family with a solid middle-class life or the simple satisfaction of creating something with your own two hands, the opportunities available through the IBEW and other union trades are limitless.
The National Labor Relations Board took another major step to eradicate the rights of working people with a recent controversial decision cracking down on workers wearing union insignia on the job.
The leadership of the IBEW, while attending its annual officers meeting this week, unanimously endorsed Vice President Joe Biden to be the next President of the United States.
An effort in Congress to make it easier for working people to join labor unions took a big step forward on Thursday when 224 members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.
A federal scheme that could rob millions of injured workers of their Social Security Disability Insurance is being widely condemned as a vicious attack on vulnerable Americans, similar to disastrous cuts in the 1980s.
Football fans across the world aren’t likely to realize it, but in most years, IBEW members are as critical to their Super Bowl viewing experience as chicken wings and guacamole.
January 2020
January Issue
Lobbying for union jobs and workers’ rights isn’t easy in a state as red as Idaho, but IBEW activists are playing a robust role in bridging the divide.
Michigan’s working families have a new powerful voice in government with the recent appointment of Muskegon, Mich., Local 275-member Sean Egan to the state’s department of labor.
Several of the IBEW's highest legislative priorities were signed into law Dec. 20.
Toronto’s GO Transit
commuter rail network has committed to a shift away from reliance on diesel-powered
locomotives, a push that could translate into meaningful, long-term employment
for up to 1,500 members of
Toronto Local 353.
The IBEW's multiyear effort on behalf of the National Child Identification Program was honored at the start of the Dec. 15 Chicago Bears-Green Bay Packers game at Lambeau Field in recognition of a strengthened partnership with other unions and the National Football League to protect missing children.
The IBEW photo contest is entering its final phase: your turn.
Across the U.S., an ongoing shortage of inspectors at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is putting workers’ lives at risk. But IBEW locals are stepping in to help fill the gaps.
Years of legwork — along with the sale of a telecommunications giant — has led to hundreds of new members for the IBEW and its local unions on Long Island and in New Jersey.
The Kamloops, British Columbia, Local 993 women's committee has been hard at work collecting all kinds of items, from clothing to toothpaste to pillowcases, for "comfort cases" for sexual assault survivors.
In the sacred story of the birth of the Navajo Nation, the first holy people rose through three worlds before emerging into the splendor of their homeland in what would become the American Southwest. They called it the Glittering World.
IBEW members who are looking for some help paying for college — for themselves or for someone in their immediate families — have until noon Eastern Time on Jan. 31 to apply for the scholarships available through Union Plus.
Although he spent most of his nearly 40-year career working as a journeyman inside wireman — or maybe because of that — Charles Bush has held a longtime, abiding appreciation for the outdoors, and for fishing in particular.
In what’s believed to be a first in the IBEW’s history, museum workers have voted in favor of joining the union and have begun to bargain with management over a first contract.
December 2019
December Issue
Tampa, Fla., Local 915 member Fernando Guillen, a journeyman inside wireman who now teaches electricity full-time at nearby Plant City HighSchool, was honored in November by Klein Tools as its 2019 Electrician of the Year.
U.S. employers are charged with violating federal law in four out of 10 union election campaigns, according to a new Economic Policy Institute study that also found that the nation’s private sector spends at least $340 million a year on union-busting consultants.
Kitchener, Ontario, Local 804 is getting some help from the federal government in the form of approximately $5.5 million for its pre-apprenticeship program.
Many of the workers at Gopher Resource’s battery and recycling plant in Tampa, Fla., were perplexed by the company’s message after it was sold last year. They were a little angry, too.
Weeks ago, two Republican senators unveiled a plan that threatens to destroy the multiemployer pension system that provides retirement security to hundreds of thousands of IBEW members.
When Bernie Hellstrom picked up an obstruction on his boat's sounder, he knew something big was there, but he had no idea how historic it was — or that he would discover it with an IBEW brother.
Senate Republicans are readying a radical plan to raise taxes on retiree pension benefits and put catastrophic burdens on union retirement plans, according to documents released last month.
Person A takes off from San Francisco for a 389-mile flight to Los Angeles International Airport's Terminal 4. At the same time, Person B exits the 405 freeway bound for the same destination just 2.5 miles away.
It may not be news to those in the business, but new numbers back up what IBEW and other union construction members already know: there’s safety in a union.
November 2019
November Issue
The National Labor Relations Board’s own workers rallied Monday against management abuses affecting their union’s ability to represent them, signaling new depths of the agency’s union-busting agenda.
An efficiency scheme being adopted by most large freight railroads threatens the safety and job security of members in the IBEW’s railroad branch, and International President Lonnie R. Stephenson is appealing to the Transportation Department to take a closer look at the practice and its potentially dangerous outcomes.
Massachusetts and Rhode Island lawmakers took decisive action to lessen the impact of last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME. The new laws provide greater protections for unions and their members, and it’s thanks, in no small part, to IBEW efforts.
Every November the Department of Labor holds National Apprenticeship Week to raise the profile of certified training programs that provide a path to the middle class for working people.
More than 500 Long Beach, Calif., municipal workers are newly represented by Diamond Bar Local 47 after a multi-year effort to join the IBEW.
This Nov. 11 we pay tribute to our brave servicemen and women in the U.S. and Canada. But honoring our veterans includes making sure they return home with the career opportunities they deserve, and for many, that means a career in the trades.
Dan Cosner grew up in an IBEW home and followed his father into the trades. He decided early in his career a leadership position would be the right fit for him.
The White House suspended more than 100 shovel-ready military construction projects in September to divert funding for a border fence, effectively killing hundreds of potential IBEW jobs.
This summer, IBEW leaders asked for your urgent help. Our apprenticeships were under attack, threatened by a nonunion contractor-backed Labor Department rule that would allow them to operate second-rate training programs and present them as equal to our own.
October 2019
October Issue
One of the largest entertainment and retail complexes on the planet opened its doors five miles west of New York City on Friday after decades of planning and delays and multiple changes in ownership.
The IBEW’s Family Medical Care Plan is more than just a health insurance plan; it’s also a surprisingly effective organizing tool.
One of the programs offered under the IBEW’s Family Medical Care Plan can help members make important medical decisions with confidence.
Crystal Rourke says life wasn’t quite as tough two years ago as it now sounds.
Working families scored big wins in Canada’s federal elections on Monday – and the IBEW held an especially important seat in Winnipeg’s Elmwood-Transcona riding.
With every vote counted in 2017, pro-worker lawmakers in Virginia were one botched ballot away from shared control of the House of Delegates.
Like many skilled trades workers, Paul Hughes wondered how he would make ends meet following the economic collapse in 2008. Construction came to a near standstill in his hometown, so the Columbus, Ohio, Local 683 member became a traveler and took to the road.
Railroad branch members in New York and Connecticut have been installing modern electronic message signs that provide real-time service information to Metro-North’s customers.
Labor and its allies have battled strong headwinds in Kentucky recently. The election of Gov. Matt Bevin in 2015 and a GOP takeover in the House the following year meant a single-party state government intent on rolling back union rights.
John Bel Edwards is the only union-friendly governor in the Deep South, and he is on the ballot in
Louisiana Oct. 12.
A court injunction that temporarily protected federal workers from a hostile government agenda expired last week, prompting the Trump administration to order agencies to enforce anti-union policies the president issued in May 2018.
Toronto Local 353 Vice President Jeff Irons views the upcoming Canadian federal elections much like an organizing drive.
In an age of shrinking bipartisanship and climbing global temperatures, the Nuclear Powers America Act might just be the bipartisan legislation the country needs to cleanly and reliably power future generations.
The Trump administration announced its final overtime rule on Sept. 24, ending a yearslong process that sought to undo the original, more generous, 2016 rule.
Students at Mountain Valley Elementary School in southern West Virginia’s Mercer County were forced to wait more than a month beyond the start of the school year for their facility’s grand opening. Construction delays were at fault, the state’s Affiliated Construction Trades reported in August.
It’s an important signal that unions are working when the rich and powerful spend billions trying to silence them.
September 2019
September Issue
After decades spent attacking the rights of workers struggling for justice and safety on the job, corporate lawyer Eugene Scalia is a vote away from taking the reins of the U.S. Department of Labor.
A trailblazing California law that IBEW members fought for will extend job rights and benefits to hundreds of thousands of workers long misclassified by employers as independent contractors.
Service to others was central to Eppie Griego long before he became an active member of Pueblo, Colo., Local 12.
On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers finally arrived in Galveston, Texas, bearing news that had taken six long months to wend its way through the South: Congress had passed the 13th Amendment freeing American slaves.
Dubuque, Iowa, Local 704 Business Manager Tom Townsend won’t take any credit for a successful organizing effort and first contract for workers at the city’s Hilton Garden Inn along the Mississippi River.
Reports of labor’s demise have been greatly exaggerated according to a new Gallup poll.
Every step of the way at Trayer Switchgear near San Francisco, IBEW members treat the products they make as if their own family will use them.
The IBEW joined with other unions in two states – one on the East Coast, the other on the West – to pass legislation that strengthens public employee unions following last year’s Janus decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Barack Obama still was president
when Springfield, Mo., city employees
votedin the fall of 2015 to join Springfield Local 753.
"Everybody needs a law that is precise and certain."
Lisa Bagalay was, by all accounts, an exceptional member of Detroit Local 17's Line Clearance and Tree Trimmer apprenticeship program.
August 2019
August Issue
The transition from military to civilian life can be a difficult one for servicemen and women. Gone are the regular paychecks, the structure, the camaraderie and the shared sense of mission. That first step after military discharge often feels like a leap into the unknown.
Toronto’s leaders stood defiantly in June against an anti-union attempt by Ontario’s Conservative Party to reclassify the city’s relationship with its construction workforce.
CEO compensation has skyrocketed 940 percent over the past 40 years in the United States, 78 times the rate of growth in workers’ pay and benefits, according to one of two new studies that challenge the upbeat conventional wisdom about today’s economy.
Just days are left to help save the IBEW’s apprenticeships from greedy nonunion contractors who want to cut corners on training.
A simple sticker on the side of a work truck could be easily overlooked, but for IBEW members at Entergy Arkansas, that bit of plastic represents something more: a sign of growing pride on the job and an improved relationship with management; a symbol of the values embodied in the IBEW’s Code of Excellence.
A commitment to the values of the IBEW and organized labor, as well as academic achievement, personal character and financial need each were all factors in determining this year’s IBEW recipients of the Union Plus scholarshipsfor the 2019-2020 school year.
Rick Luiten didn’t have to rely on abstract statistics or second-hand anecdotes when he testified in favor of Washington state’s new law imposing tougher penalties on people who assault utility workers.
An IBEW-backed bill introduced in the U.S. Senate would ensure that the country’s growing number of clean energy construction jobs will be filled by unionized electrical workers and by highly trained brothers and sisters in other union trades.
About 3,000 employees at DirecTV facilities across 13 states voted for IBEW representation and approved contracts in 2016, a major organizing win for a telecommunications industry that has weathered remarkable change over the last decade.
Intensive lobbying by activists from the IBEW and other labor unions paid off on July 24 when a bipartisan majority in the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Rehabilitation for Multiemployer Pension Act by a vote of 264 to 169.
One of the largest projects in the IBEW is finally underway north of Pittsburgh.
Opioid deaths in the U.S. and Canada are at epidemic levels, ravaging communities across regional, ethnic and socioeconomic divides. But no industry suffers higher rates of addiction and death than one of our own: construction.
Five thousand miles from the building codes and safety rules of Ontario, Canada, the team of IBEW electricians had never seen anything quite like the dormitories for older students from a Guatemalan children’s home.
July 2019
July Issue
If knowledge is power, then political knowledge is the fuel of an informed democracy. And according to a recent study, unions are a valuable source.
Members of Trenton, N.J., Local 269 put in long, hard hours during the week. But well-earned weekends aren’t just for relaxing; many members are also committed to the wide variety of community service activities the local sponsors through its “Good of the Union” committee.
In On July 10, Rep. Linda Sanchez of California formally introduced a House of Representatives resolution to designate that date as National Lineworkers Recognition Day.
In Florida, IBEW members are mobilizing to help kill a proposed constitutional amendment that aims to deregulate the state’s investor-owned electrical utilities — a law that, if implemented, could disrupt the livelihood of thousands of electricians who work and live there.
The IBEW has its first new local in the state of Georgia in nearly 40 years. The birth of Atlanta Local 1997 on June 29 marks a major victory for the rights of working people in the Deep South.
The IBEW urgently needs your help to protect our training programs from a pending federal rule that would let businesses run shoddy apprenticeships with minimal standards, oversight and pay.
The House of Representatives voted 419-6 to repeal punitive taxes on many union health plans, a major win for union workers and a rare moment of bipartisanship in Washington.
With the federal election on the horizon, Ottawa, Ontario, Local 2228 reached tentative agreement with the Treasury Board for a new four-year contract that will guarantee an 8% increase in salary for the more than 1,000 members covered.
Secretary-Treasurer Kenneth W. Cooper joined hundreds of labor activists representing the IBEW and other unions Wednesday to rally on Capitol Hill encouraging Congress to pass a bill aimed at rescuing troubled multiemployer pension plans.
An early summer thunderstorm had knocked out power in parts of northwest Washington, D.C.
Led by IBEW members, Nevada’s building trades unions hit a triple in the Legislature this spring, restoring prevailing wage and project labor agreement laws killed by the business lobby in 2015, and ensuring that apprentices from accredited programs fill a percentage of jobs at public construction sites.
As summer temperatures soar to scorching heights, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is here with recommendations and tips to stay safe on the job, even a smartphone app, but no federal standard as to what “safe” actually means.
A globetrotter at heart, John Murphy was already adept at swapping his Queens apartment for digs in Europe, Asia, South America and the Caribbean.
The North American electrical grid is the largest machine ever built by human hands. The interconnecting web of power plants, end users and everything in between has an unknowable number of components that fuel the $20 trillion U.S. economy.
June 2019
June Issue
When the Ottawa River swelled to record levels this spring, IBEW members were there to help.
After four failed organizing drives and two years of negotiation, the 1,400 members of Baltimore Local 410 ratified a first contract on Sunday with Baltimore Gas and Electric.
Bruce Johnson, a Casper, Wyo., Local 322 organizer and avid outdoorsman, has been named the IBEW Conservation Steward of the Year for his leadership on volunteer projects protecting elk and their habitat.
A major initiative is underway to ensure that every IBEW member eligible to vote is registered, aiming to educate members that participating in the electoral process directly translates to power on the job and at the negotiating table.
With just four or five classes to go, Todd Bedard is on the verge of having an associate degree in business management – without accruing a penny of student debt.
A trio of recently introduced bills before the U.S. House of Representatives could help unlock meaningful, long-term employment for IBEW members in Nevada — and beyond.
When the Liberal Party took power in Canada in 2015, the IBEW and working families gained access to halls of power on Parliament Hill that hadn’t existed in the previous four years of Conservative rule and five years of coalition government before that.
Steady and plentiful work is on the horizon for members of Chester, Pa., Local 654, thanks to a newly announced, multimillion-dollar project labor agreement covering the ongoing revitalization of the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex in suburban Philadelphia.
For decades, Jersey City, N.J., Local 164 electricians were among the hundreds of union tradespeople who built nearly two dozen ShopRite grocery stores in New Jersey and New York.
Hundreds of IBEW jobs in Ohio could be in serious jeopardy if the state’s Legislature fails to pass a bill to keep two nuclear plants open.
May 2019
May Issue
The future of organizing is here, IBEW leaders say, and new tools and technology will play a key role in recruiting the next generation to meet the needs of a growing electrical industry.
Weeks before Christmas, hundreds of IBEW members swarmed Capitol Hill to kill a proposal that would have crippled multi-employer pension plans.
Identifying and encouraging high school students who might benefit from a career in the electrical trades is the aim of a new partnership between Chicago Local 134 and a school district in the city’s northwestern suburbs.
Rico Albacarys didn’t sulk or stew when he was turned down for a Baltimore Local 24 apprenticeship back in 2010. Instead, he got back to work – and the right people noticed.
When back-up generators at nuclear power stations stop working, the clock starts ticking before federal rules require the main unit to shut down. So, when the 49,000-pound back-up diesel generator went quiet at the Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station in upstate New York, the nearly 75 members of Syracuse Local 97 in the maintenance department had a monumental challenge on their hands.
Growing membership in a manufacturing local is a challenge under any circumstances. American jobs continue to move overseas at an alarming clip, so growth in a right-to-work state makes it even more of an achievement.
Expanding programs for women who might be considering a career in the skilled construction trades, or who are already in them, is the goal of a new joint initiative of Canada’s Building Trades Unions and the federal government.
The Social Security Administration has joined a growing list of federal agencies that are impeding the ability of unions to represent government workers and taking extreme positions in contract talks.
IBEW leaders are asking members and friends to contact Missouri state senators this week and urge them to vote against any bill that would derail construction of the Grain Belt Express, an environmentally friendly, electrical transmission project that will deliver wind power from the Midwest to the East Coast power grid.
Pro-union lawmakers are pushing for landmark federal legislation that would pull the teeth of right-to-work laws and impose stronger, swifter penalties on law-breaking employers, ensuring that workers across the country have the right to join unions and bargain collectively for better wages, benefits and working conditions.
IBEW activists have an extra spring in their step walking the halls of America’s statehouses this year.
Hundreds of people rallied on the Pennsylvania Capitol steps this week, urging the Legislature to save thousands of clean energy jobs – and fast.
Summer is almost here, and that means it’s time for this year’s IBEW photo contest.
Beneath nearly every American city, a crisis is unfolding. While talk of America's crumbling infrastructure focuses on bridges and roads, ports and airports, below ground the aging pipe networks that carry natural gas to homes and businesses grow more dangerous by the day.
Every year, hundreds of construction workers are killed on the job and more than a third die from falls, the number one cause of accidental deaths in the industry. The tragic loss of our brothers and sisters is made all the more bitter because every death or injury from a fall is preventable with proper training and the use of appropriate fall protection.
Iconic sports venues like Augusta National and Daytona International Speedway came to feel like second homes for Neil McCaffrey during an award-winning career as a CBS camera operator.
April 2019
April Issue
The West Block section of Canada’s historic Parliament Hill recently underwent a major restoration and members of Ottawa, Ontario, Local 586 were there to power it.
Union members across the U.S. and Canada will pause on April 28 to remember fellow workers who lost their lives on the job over the past year and to recommit themselves to the effort to prevent workplace deaths and injuries.
An IBEW member’s bill to ban cities and counties in Illinois from passing local right-to-work ordinances has become law, two years after the state’s previous governor vetoed the legislation.
As the number of OSHA inspectors shrinks, enforcement action to safeguard workers is on the decline — at the same time that investigations into workplace deaths and injuries are rising.
One of the legacies of the IBEW’s founding fathers isn’t directly related to organizing or pulling wire, but it remains very much in the spirit of the Brotherhood and unionism. It’s the IBEW Founders’ Scholarship.
The fastest growing jobs in nearly a quarter of U.S. states are IBEW jobs according to projections form the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The IBEW has represented thousands of nuclear energy workers over the years, usually in either the construction or utility branches.
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Local 37 earlier this year won an award from Electricity Human Resources Canada for its Training Trust Fund, a program that offers members continuing education opportunities in a variety of areas including essential “soft skills” – the first time a union has earned the prize.
Last April, Houston Local 66’s young members group had four members. Today, they have close to 50 – and they’re showing no signs of slowing down.
The Latino population in northwestern Ohio has risen steadily over the last 40 years. For Toledo, Ohio, Local 8’s Ricardo Jiménez, this presents a rich recruiting opportunity that can help the IBEW grow as well.
With Canada’s next federal election only six months away, IBEW leaders and activists are reminding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party majority in Parliament that they have not yet made good on one of their 2015 campaign pledges: to bring back the country’s federal fair wages law.
For the federal workforce, the Trump administration’s budget proposal for 2020 reads like a roadmap to civil service demise, with calls for cuts to annual leave and retirement security, pay freezes and a weakening of collective bargaining rights.
W. Jeffrey Koepp is like many baby boomers who grew up in and around the Michigan cities of Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. He’d long heard tales from older family members who’d worked at the nearby Willow Run Bomber Plant of how the B-24 bombers built there turned the tide of World War II against Germany.
March 2019
March Issue
For more than three decades, New Hampshire has been the lone New England state lacking a prevailing wage law. But after voters in November’s elections sent labor-friendly majorities to the state’s Legislature, IBEW members in the Granite State are hopeful that such a statute could finally be making a comeback.
Ian Oliver has always wanted to know how things work. The nitty-gritty of machinery, how it’s engineered, and what happens mechanically when you pull a lever or flip a switch.
U.S. railroads already are among the safest in the world. But over the past several years, IBEW members have helped install technology across the country that aims to make them even safer.
Two members of Congress are pushing for answers about the National Labor Relations Board’s plans to contract out its unionized staff’s duties reviewing public comments on the controversial joint employer rule.
There is nothing to break the stark view from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It floats like a white marble ark in a sea of green lawn and small, white-capped grave markers for the thousands of buried troops. All of Washington D.C.’s grand monuments are hidden from sight across the Potomac from Arlington National Cemetery.
Utility Director Donnie Colston testified before a House subcommittee on March 7, telling members the role the IBEW and other unions can play in meeting the nation’s increased demand for workers in the energy and nuclear industries.
Two IBEW locals and their employer have won the inaugural Edwin D. Hill Award for their expansive efforts to protect good jobs and Nevada power customers, a campaign that led to the landslide defeat of a deceptive state ballot measure last November.
The Trump administration has issued its version of an Obama-era rule to extend overtime pay, one that leaves out millions of working people.
Jay Willis is accustomed to making quick decisions as an audio mixer during major sporting telecasts, primarily while working as a freelancer for CBS.
Tax season is here, and tens of millions of Americans are finding an unpleasant surprise when they enter the final calculations on their return.
The government of Canada has assembled a new council to address the future of jobs in the country, and Vancouver, British Columbia, Local 213 assistant business manager Lisa Langevin will serve as a member.
When Salt Lake City Local 354 member Jared Brydson returned from the IBEW’s International Convention in 2016, he was looking for ideas to increase engagement among new members. Then, he and Business Manager Russ Lamoreaux landed on the idea of a boot camp.
West Virginia’s working people scored a big win on Wednesday when Kanawha County Circuit Court Judge Jennifer Bailey ruled unconstitutional parts of the state’s 2016 right-to-work law.
February 2019
February Issue
Under the guise of modernizing apprenticeships and cutting red tape, Ontario’s provincial government recently pushed through a blatantly anti-worker measure that instead will end up putting skilled people out of work and placing workers’ safety at risk.
Sally McKleinfeld has been helping female friends with their résumés for years. Now she’s developed a program to help even more women within New York Local 3.
From long shifts in driving snow to moving portraits and Pacific sunset views, this year’s photo contest winners captured what it means to be a member of the IBEW.
A little less than a year ago, the Electrical Worker told you about a crisis in our democracy. The picture was dark. Tens of millions of American citizens live in gerrymandered electoral districts with borders surgically created to keep incumbent politicians in office. Millions more voters are locked out of the voting booth entirely.
Bringing his utility truck to a stop at a traffic light south of San Diego on a late January morning, Martin Barraza was shocked to see an overturned sedan, its crushed hood and front roof pressing against the pavement.
IBEW electricians from New York, Illinois and Minnesota swept the top honors at the third annual 2018 Ideal National Championship, held Dec. 1-3 near Orlando, Fla.
Missouri added 25,000 working people to its union membership last year, propelled by a major right-to-work win victory where Show Me State workers made a compelling public case for the value of unions.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has gutted an Obama-era rule that required employers to report on-the-job injuries and illnesses.
After 38 years in the telecom industry and 35 years as an IBEW member in his native Illinois, Randy Phillips wasn’t quite ready to call it a retirement when he left AT&T in 2011. He came from a strong union family with a tradition of fighting for working people.
Retired Manchester, Maine, Local 1837 member Cynthia Phinney and Chicago Local 134 apprentice Lily Wu have been invited as official guests to attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night from the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
All parents want their children to get a good job that pays them a livable wage. For many, that means attending a four-year college institution. But for many others, there’s an alternate path.
More than 100 million people in the United States alone will watch the Super Bowl Sunday night on CBS. And, as usual, the network will rely heavily on IBEW broadcasting members to provide a world-class viewing event.
January 2019
January Issue
The Ville neighborhood on St. Louis’s near north side is an historic one for the region and the IBEW.
In support of broadcast members, the IBEW has joined with about a dozen other unions within the entertainment industry to share resources as part of a pledge to combat workplace harassment.
It took Briane Montoya two days, but she finally found another woman who was an outside lineman like her. For someone who’s often the only woman on her job site, it was a big moment.
As the federal government shutdown drags on with no end in sight, more and more federal employees are going without. IBEW members, including those at Corpus Christi, Texas, Local 278, are stepping in to help.
A little-known federal agency charged with protecting the right of government workers to organize is refusing to recognize its own union.
The union hall of a disbanded Ohio local is finding new life as a museum and learning center, thanks to an innovative partnership forged between the local’s former leaders and a nearby university.
You have the flu.
Modern medicine’s solution is for you to drag yourself to the car, try not to kill anyone as you drive through a pounding headache, then wait who-knows-how-long on a sticky plastic couch to see a doctor you don’t know for a prescription. And you’ll pay for the privilege.
As Interstate 68 curves through Cumberland, Md., the speed limit drops from 70 miles per hour to 40, providing drivers an opportunity to glimpse a historic church that once served as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Typically, the solution to the stagnant number of women in construction – it’s been stuck at roughly 3 percent for decades – is to recruit more women. The BC Centre for Women in the Trades is taking a different approach: retention.
On Jan. 10, the 20th of day of federal government shutdown, employees gathered outside the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C. and in cities across the country to issue a message to Congress and the White House: Do your job so we can do ours.
Fed up with their deteriorating office environment, a majority of the employees at a utility call center in Connecticut recently voted to join the IBEW in a united effort to improve their working conditions.
On what is expected to be the 20th day of the federal government shutdown, the AFL-CIO is organizing a rally to call for an end to the partial government stoppage. More than 30 unions, including the IBEW, are co-sponsoring the event.
The new year has started off on a precarious, if all-too-familiar, foot for the nation’s federal employees.
Every year, the IBEW hands out hundreds –yes hundreds—of 70-year pins to men and women marking seven decades as members of the Brotherhood.
For IBEW members employed by the U.S. Department of Energy and dealing with a work-related illness, there could be a new way to get help with your medical bills.