From the desert to the mountains to the Pacific Ocean, the 15,500 members of Diamond Bar Local 47 are flung far and wide in Southern California and a sliver of western Nevada.

Their jobs are as varied as the landscape — linemen, of course, but also scientists and payroll clerks, helicopter pilots and surveyors, crane operators and traffic flaggers. In all, the local represents more than 200 classifications at utilities, municipal water districts, outside contractors and other employers.

In such an eclectic and sprawling union family, it’d be easy to feel more like distant cousins than brothers and sisters.

But thousands of happy faces at the local’s annual picnic — beaming moms, dads, kids and grandparents shouting “We are 47!” into a camera — tell another story.

“If you look around the park, you can’t tell who’s who,” Business Manager Colin Lavin said. “Everyone’s mingling and having a great time just like a big family. Like a brotherhood.”

With carnival rides, games and food rivaling a county fair, the autumn picnic draws more than 20,000 members and guests. But it’s not the only way that leadership and staff are building unity inside the IBEW’s third-largest local.

“As Colin always says, ‘We are many, but we are one,’” said Ron Baker, chairman of Local 47’s executive board and journeyman lineman at Southern California Edison, the local’s biggest employer. “That’s not just a slogan. It’s how we operate. We intentionally create opportunities for members and families to connect and bond beyond the jobsite.”

The local’s first-ever Women’s Committee is one of them, a thriving group launched just two years ago. Members can be spotted at food banks, running clothing drives, packing boxes of essentials for unhoused people, providing shoes for schoolchildren in need, cleaning up beaches, even hosting a women’s health forum.

“It’s gotten me even more involved in my union,” said Brenda Guzman, a steward and engineering technician at the Irving Ranch Water District. “There’s more passion for me, more participation. I just love being part of it. And I’m getting to know Local 47 sisters I might not have met without the committee.”

Forming a Women’s Committee had been on Business Representative Erin Koh’s mind for years, but she said Lavin was the first to say it out loud. “He’d go to the women’s breakout groups at IBEW conferences, and at one of them he said to me, ‘Why don’t we have a Women’s Committee?’”

Within two months, they did. Koh, who serves as president, said it began with a core group of members, mainly from SCE, and has been growing in size and job diversity ever since, supporting and empowering women in a local that’s more than 95% male.

Koh and Guzman said many sisters have the common experience of not being heard — men at worksites who talk over them or dismiss their opinions. The committee and a women’s peer-to-peer support group have given them safe places to share and problem-solve, building confidence and friendships along the way.

“We want to be sure we’re putting women in positions to succeed,” Koh said.

Led by a Local 47 member, an energetic regional chapter of the Electrical Workers Minority Caucus is also getting members better acquainted and more involved. And everyone is welcome.

“What we like to say is that if you’re a union member in the United States, then you are a minority,” said SoCal EWMC President Jesse Elizalde, an electric substation test technician for the city of Anaheim.

Among the chapter’s eight locals, he said, Local 47 and Santa Ana Local 441 participate the most. “We get a lot of people from Anaheim, mostly because they’re the ones I can reach out to personally. But we’ve got members from Edison, tree trimmers, outside contractors, construction workers. We’re spread out.”

So much so, that “every one of our core, active members has a different job title and a different employer,” he said. “It’s really cool. After a few meetings, you don’t even think about the differences. You think about the core values that brought you together.”

As volunteers, they’ve made repairs and upgrades to a VFW hall and other facilities for veterans, worked food banks and recently held the chapter’s second blood drive. “We feel fortunate for what we have, and we want to give back,” Elizalde said. “And in the course of doing those activities, we become a family.”

Union-wide, the picnic is Local 47’s biggest draw. Phil Niedenthal, an SCE steward and line crew foreman, said his family enjoys everything from the petting zoo to the roller coaster to the wide variety of food and music and, best of all, the company.

“It’s a great atmosphere,” he said. “You’re able to see people you don’t see daily, either from the contracting side or they work for Edison but they’re hours away, and you get to see their kids growing up. There’s a lot of love there.”

Other major events include a motorcycle run — coming up this month — and a golf tournament, both of them annually benefiting injured workers. Also popular are Cars & Coffee gatherings where members show off their pride-and-joy vehicles and shoot the breeze.

The local’s vibrant Instagram page — with more than 25,000 followers and as many as 2 million monthly views — has been vital to its growing solidarity. Flush with notices spurring turnout for events, meetings and more, posts also mark milestones, applaud honorees and salute everyone from graduating apprentices to new retirees.

More uniquely, the page has become a scrapbook of Local 47’s diversity, with daily posts starring members doing nearly every kind of represented job. The photos come largely from business representatives’ visits to worksites and are paired with captions that commend workers’ skills, teamwork and attention to safety.

The page is also a bulletin board for mental health, continually promoting Local 47’s crisis training and peer-to-peer support groups for connection and recovery.

Amid an epidemic of suicides and addiction among utility and construction workers, the IBEW has made mental health an international priority. Local 47 rolled out its own campaign even earlier.

“Just like watching out for a brother’s physical safety on the job, having someone’s back in a crisis has to be our highest calling,” Lavin said.

Originally a journeyman wireman out of Los Angeles Local 11, Lavin was hired as a Local 47 organizer in 2005 and rose through the ranks. Promoted to business manager by the executive board in late 2021, he replaced his father, Pat Lavin, who retired after 22 years in office.

The membership elected Lavin in 2023 and reelected him this June. But he knows there were skeptics when he took the reins — whispers that he’d inherited the job and snickers about a wireman running an outside local.

Baker and Koh say Lavin has more than proved himself as a leader. They have high praise for Pat Lavin, too, but chuckle at how different the two men are — the elder’s “iron fist” style of management and his son’s more relaxed approach.

It’s a style that lends itself to brotherhood and well-being, Baker said, citing the local’s mental health initiatives under Lavin.

“I’m especially proud of that,” Baker said. “Not only do we want to build a family through the things we do out in the community, we also want to be that big brother and give people a hug when they need it.”

Ultimately, Lavin tells members, unity equals power — more bodies on picket lines, more voices fighting anti-worker legislation, more signatures on letters and petitions.

“There’s no cavalry coming to save us,” Lavin said. “As the Brotherhood, we are the cavalry.”