Retiring Utility Director Donnie Colston, a 45-year IBEW member and longtime leader, received a surprise award in March from a group representing the IBEW and its electrical utility partners.
Colston retired April 1 after serving as the Utility Department’s director for the last eight years. Initiated into the IBEW as a journeyman lineman with Louisville, Ky., Local 2100 in 1980, over time he became increasingly active with his local, his city’s building and construction trades council, and his state’s AFL-CIO chapter. After becoming director of the Utility Department in 2017, he frequently met with officials at federal government agencies and testified before Congress four times.
International President Kenneth W. Cooper presented Colston with the Edwin D. Hill Award during the National Labor and Management Public Affairs Committee’s 18th annual conference in Washington.
“Because of Donnie’s calming sense of leadership, the IBEW is stronger than ever in the utility industry,” Cooper said, “from promoting strong labor-management partnerships to ensuring that the voices of IBEW members are always heard on Capitol Hill.”
“Because of Donnie’s calming sense of leadership, the IBEW is stronger than ever in the utility industry.”
– International President Kenneth W. Cooper on retired Utility Director Donnie Colston (at podium)
The IBEW’s international president from 2001 to 2014, Hill led the formation of national LAMPAC in 2007 to broaden partnerships between the union and the investor-owned utilities represented by the Edison Electrical Institute. The Hill Award recognizes individuals who have helped strengthen such partnerships.
Colston was moved by the award. “The IBEW taught me how to represent my fellow workers and placed me in a position to advocate for them,” he said. “I’m very honored by the IBEW’s faith in me as a member and representative.” (Read more about Colston in the April Electrical Worker.)
“Usually, we don’t give out two Hill Awards,” said Cooper, acknowledging that the decision to honor Colston had been kept secret. “Sometimes we do something special because we have special circumstances.”
Representatives from San Diego Local 465 and San Diego Gas and Electric also were on hand to receive a Hill award, honoring their successes in fighting an initiative to force the municipal government to take over the utility’s operations inside the city limits.
“By working together, you convinced the City Council to reject that initiative, protecting both affordable and secure power for customers and good union jobs for working people,” Cooper said.
The nine-member San Diego City Council unanimously rejected the initiative last June. Had it not, said Local 465 Business Manager Nate Fairman, hundreds of the more than 1,500 IBEW jobs at SDG&E would have been jeopardized, risking the pay and benefits of those left behind and harming the local’s bargaining power.
“There was only one sentence mentioning union labor” when the initiative was drafted, Fairman said. “They didn’t reach out to us.”
At informational pickets and at every City Council meeting when the initiative was on the agenda, Local 465 members spread the word about how municipalization could put San Diegans on the hook for billions of dollars in startup and purchasing costs, with billions more gone thanks to lost tax and franchise revenues.
Local 465 Members Help Stop
City Takeover of SDG&E
Fairman said IBEW members also forged strong partnerships with economic organizations and businesses, SDG&E’s managers and other unions.
“It’s extremely difficult to connect and overlap our priorities with some of these unions,” he said. “If there’s a strike or picket line … we turn out workers, because one thing in the labor movement we believe in is solidarity. So, when we actually were under attack, I was able to connect with them.”
Fairman said the coalition stands ready for the release of a City Council-commissioned municipalization feasibility study this summer, something that could reignite activists’ efforts.
“The successes that we need to have in the next five to 10 years are going to involve all of us needing to work together,” Fairman said.
Scores of representatives from IBEW districts and utility locals across the
U.S. joined industry representatives for the 18th annual National LAMPAC meeting, featuring panel discussions led by IBEW and management leaders on topics such as safety, legislation and grid resilience.
Public Service Electric and Gas Chair Ralph LaRossa wrapped up the day by presenting the John D. Dingell Award to the authors of a House of Representatives resolution to designate July 10 as Journeyman Lineworkers Recognition Day.
“Everything he did was focused on bringing labor and management together,” said LaRossa of Dingell, a former Democratic representative from Michigan who also was the longest-serving member of Congress. Dingell, who died in 2019, had served as a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee for nearly 60 years — as its chair for more than half that.
Last summer, H.R. 1355 was introduced by Rep. Linda Sánchez, a Democrat from California and a former compliance officer and member of Santa Ana, Calif., Local 441. “After any natural disaster, you guys are often the first on the ground trying to restore power and to connect people with really critical services,” she said.
Rep. Donald Norcross, an active member of Folsom, N.J., Local 351 and a former assistant business manager, agreed. “Outside of the military, [you’re] the largest group of workers that comes together to keep us safe,” said the New Jersey Democrat.
IBEW members “have bipartisan colleagues here who will always have your back,” added Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a life member of Trenton, N.J., Local 269.
“Labor needs industry and industry needs labor, and the two working together can benefit all that we love,” he said.
