By a tally of 196 to 29, workers at a new Siemens USA switchgear manufacturing facility in Texas voted Nov. 1 to join the IBEW and Arlington Local 220.

"Everybody's excited, feeling like they're protected and can have a career here," said Denice Haven, a Siemens worker who led the unit's volunteer organizing committee. "The campaign went wonderfully."

The new plant is about 15 miles south of a similar one in Grand Prairie where workers have been represented by Local 220 for several years. In March 2022, some of those IBEW members remotely joined a White House meeting with then-International President Lonnie Stephenson, President Joe Biden and Siemens USA CEO Barbara Humpton. At that meeting, Humpton announced her company's planned investment of more than $500 million toward production expansion nationwide.

"Switchgear is absolutely vital to the electrification of everything," Humpton told the Fort Worth Report, citing data centers, electric vehicles and charging stations. The company predicts 10% annual data center demand growth over the next five years.

Following Humpton's announcement, staffing at Grand Prairie grew by nearly 50%, and Siemens began building the Fort Worth sister plant, said Local 220 Business Manager Joshua Worthey.

"We were under the belief that the new facility was going to be treated as an extension of the existing facility," Worthey said.

Siemens, however, considered the new plant as separate — and nonunion. The company has a neutrality agreement with the IBEW, though, which meant that it would not interfere with a unionizing campaign at Fort Worth.

"For the most part, they were about as neutral as I think you could see them be on one of these types of campaigns," Worthey said.

Seventh District International Representative Alan Cutler, who services Local 220, noted that Siemens did hold joint unionizing discussions with the IBEW. "It was actually pretty helpful, in that we were able to tell which work groups and shifts were on board" with joining, Cutler said.

Local 220, which represents about 1,000 workers in 51 Texas counties, is involved in outside construction and utility work, as well as manufacturing.

Siemens, meanwhile, expects to hire more than 700 workers to staff the Fort Worth plant by the end of this year and reach 1,300 by 2027. The goal is to manufacture, test and distribute nearly 400 switchgears weekly.

Predictions like these helped fuel the VOC's urgency. "We wanted just to lock in those union protections, get them started," Haven said.

The organizing campaign, which began early last year, benefited from the transfer of nearly three dozen workers from Grand Prairie to Fort Worth.

"We had good participation by people who understand what it means to be in a union," said Local 220 organizer and Recording Secretary Jedon Shinpaugh, mentioning Haven and fellow VOC members Attela Lewis, Gianni Gipson and Fabian Ramirez.

"I felt like on some ends we weren't getting treated fairly," Haven said. "The union helped us out."

Worthey noted that the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the fourth-largest metroplex in the United States and one of the fastest-growing, has low union density. "I see that as a positive," he said. "It means we have nothing but growth potential."

Shinpaugh said some of the Fort Worth hires had been members of other unions. When it came to organizing, she said, "they totally understood what they were doing, and they knew how to do it."

Community enthusiasm for the campaign also seemed strong, said Lead Organizer David Galvan. During a "honk-and-wave" at the plant before the vote, for example, "almost every driver was honking, flashing us the thumbs-up or waving," he said.

This excitement inspired the organizing team to persevere, Cutler said. "I mean, you're going to keep going no matter what, but it gave you that little extra oomph."

"We continued pushing the door knocks, phone banking, and mail and text campaigns — everything we could throw at it," Worthey said.

Volunteers from San Antonio Local 60 and Houston Local 716 also helped, Galvan said, joined from Oklahoma by Lead Organizer K.J. Payton and State Organizing Coordinator Trentice Hamm.

The group effort paid off when it was revealed after the vote that 87% of those eligible to do so had cast ballots supporting organizing with Local 220. The National Labor Relations Board certified the vote shortly afterward.

Manufacturing Director Brian Lamm called the outcome "a breath of fresh air."

"This is a really big win for manufacturing, and all credit goes to the local organizers," Lamm said.

Regional Organizing Coordinator Craig Parkman praised Shinpaugh. "She's a new organizer, and she was being pulled in a million directions," he said. "Jedon was out there talking to the workers in the beginning and throughout the whole process."

The Fort Worth plant's workers were about to begin first-contract negotiations as this newspaper went to press.

"Getting these folks to a contract now is just going to make everybody's life so much better as they continue to bring in employees and expand," Galvan said.