Momentum is on the side of working families heading into November’s midterm elections, IBEW officials and allies said during last Friday’s Government Affairs Caucus.
But that will matter little if union members don’t vote in greater numbers — and don’t fight back against the Trump administration’s plans to make it more difficult for many Americans to vote.
“People hear news stories about how it is going to be a big ‘blue wave’ and start to think their vote is less important,” Political Director Joseph Zahorik said. “I implore all of you to keep your foot on the gas, ignore the polls and keep fighting for every single vote. This is our fight, specifically.”
Zahorik and other speakers advised attendees to take three steps:
- Take a few minutes to confirm that you are registered, and help others do the same.
- Commit to at least one date of canvassing or calling on behalf of an IBEW-endorsed candidate.
- Volunteer or recruit someone to work as a poll worker.
“We need your leadership now more than ever,” U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs, a California Democrat whose district includes parts of San Diego, told the caucus. “Unions are one of our most powerful tools to encounter the rise of authoritarianism. Unions are one of the first and strongest organizations to protect our constitutional rights.”
One of the caucus’s themes was “Make It Too Big to Rig,” a reference to not only winning in November elections, but doing so with a large enough margin to protect against false attempts to challenge the results.
IBEW membership has soared past 900,000. But the Trump administration has canceled thousands of jobs that were to be filled by electrical workers, particularly in clean energy.
“Political action is absolutely crucial to everything we do, as you know all too well,” International President Kenneth W. Cooper said. “We can’t lead in our communities and our industries if the elected offices are set on stopping each one of us and what we want to do.”
David Carpio, the AFL-CIO’s political director, urged members to build relationships with election officials in their home areas before the November vote. He also reminded attendees they can call 1-866-OUR-VOTE to speak with a trained election volunteer for help with a pressing matter, such as someone wrongly being denied a chance to vote on Election Day.
A panel of four business managers discussed ways to counter the public’s and some lawmakers’ shifts in attitudes toward data centers. More are speaking out against them, even though they provide good jobs with life-changing benefits for electricians and other skilled construction workers.
The Government Affairs Department distributed a list of the IBEW’s four data center principles to help counter those attacks, one of which is that that data center operators should pay their fair share for energy so residential customers are protected.
Chicago Local 134 Business Manager Don Finn said it is vital for local unions to have a healthy political action fund. Nothing gets a politician’s attention quicker than when an organization no longer donates financially to their campaign, he said.
Local 134 recently cut off donations to some Illinois legislators after they signed a letter calling for a moratorium on further data center construction in the state.
“You signed a letter against our membership,” said Finn, who serves on the International Executive Council. “You’re done. We’ll find the next candidate. That’s the way it’s got to be.”
There is a positive side to the ongoing debate, however. Companies building data centers are increasingly calling on the IBEW to help navigate the government approval process — and Finn and others urged attendees to take advantage of that.
“They’re getting us in the doors at high schools and vocational programs that previously would not give us the time of day,” Dallas-Fort Worth Local 20 Business Manager Price Warwick III said. “They’re getting us in there to talk about what a career in the trades looks like.
“Now, we have a repeat relationship with that school when we couldn’t get the school board to return our phone calls.”
