By Ron Cochran
There have been ongoing organizing, jurisdictional disputes, termination cases, class action grievances, oral grievances, written grievances, and two duty of fair representation charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board. All in all, it’s been another great month in the HH and construction area.
As for organizing, it’s been a real team effort. Business Reps Ralph Armstrong and Elizabeth McInnis have been putting in long hours. We have signed several contractors including Smith Electric, ABN Commodities, Ltd., Greg Shandel Construction, Terra Firma Excavation, LLC, White Construction, Kroeker, Hutchins Paving, Basin Excavating, Aldridge Electric Transformer Technologies, Titan, Pro Traffic, Wipf Construction and SJL Construction, bringing dozens more new members into the IBEW. We are currently working on organizing (top down) several other contractors.
We are still working hard to finish new member orientations. Along with our own organizing efforts we are also working with the Building Trades to help organize companies that will fall under their scope of work. We helped the Laborers Union sign three new flagging companies in February. All in all we had another great month for organizing.
We are meeting more regularly with the building trades and fight less all the time. Under Business Manager Tom Dalzell’s leadership we are continuing to build relationships with the Building Trades. With those new relationships and the very slow recovery of the economy, the jurisdictional issues are improving. We have many new working members as a result of these efforts.
Business Rep. Ralph Armstrong continues to work on safety issues for the entire membership. Ralph helped to organize multiple Linemen safety seminars in March, while still helping to organize several new contractors. He has also been helping at times with WAPA issues.
Business Rep. Ed Dwyer has shown an interest in helping organize contractors on the North Coast. Mr. Dwyer is self-motivated and has been a huge help when time allows.
Business Rep. Liz McInnis is persistently organizing new contractors and new members, picking up the slack wherever needed. While attending last Saturday’s Advisory Council meeting she used her wordsmith talents to draft three contracts from bargaining notes that Ralph, Ed and I had gathered previously while organizing and negotiating first agreements in Willow Creek, Eureka, Ukiah, Fort Bragg and Albion. The cross-training and mutual support will be a large part of our locals’ future success. We have also had support from several other business representatives in the last few months.
Organizing is extremely labor intensive when forming a first contract. Most folks think that’s the end when the reality is that when you are top-down organizing, that first contract is just the beginning. There are formal new member orientations and countless calls from the new contractors and members on the “5-Ws”.
Employers want to know “Who” is covered by the contract and how to report on them. The members want to know “What” is in their new benefits package and “When” it’s effective. The members always want to know “Why” they’re paying working fees. The answers are all covered in negotiations and orientations but there is so much information covered it has to be gone over again.
This brings us to the question of “Where?”—where are now? A few of us are servicing dozens of contracts and the recent membership status report indicates there are 2,390 members working in construction groups and in the Hiring Hall. We receive great support from our dispatchers and general office staff. There are always problems to solve with reports, union tickets, reporting of hours, etc.
One reason we are able to process so much work through the queue is all the new technology. All of us are able to talk to the members and employers in most cases 24/7 by cell. All of our members have our cell numbers and many have them programmed into their cell phones. We continue to work and beta test every communication media to make us more available and transparent. Technology Director Leslie Asher is always available to help.
Business Rep. Mark Rolow will continue to support the construction efforts in the Southern end of the jurisdiction as needed.
Work Outlook: In Outside Line Construction work remains slow. Par Electric recently picked up 300 + Transmission poles for PG&E. Wilson won the WAPA 230KV Bid. We expect the work to take off in the May/June time frame. We do not expect many pole replacement jobs this year so the scope of work will mainly be Transmission, Substations, some Trolley, Wind Farm, Solar and Oil Refinery work. Please come to the unit meeting for specific details.
Grievances: The moon’s been full for a long time now; we have more than a dozen grievances in the oral stage with a least two in step three (the written stage). They range from wrongful terminations, hostile work environment and referral abuse by the contractor, and wrong crew sizes. The grievance in the direct referral bypass case involves the issue of a contractor directly hiring groundmen, something that took several months for us to find out. This will be a big ticket grievance for lost member wages.
Our sister Local 47 is fighting a helicopter long lining grievance as we speak. I was recently in LA for the labor management meeting over this issue. We fought this issue two years ago and it was stopped. We are not against the idea of the practice of long lining, however the real issue is the employer’s refusal to negotiate a mutually agreed to training and safety program. We feel no one should pay for this training and safety program in blood. We feel the employers should be made to negotiate this practice for the safety of our members.
Contact renegotiations: We are current on all our contracts, with five negotiations planned in the fall of 2010. A couple of our Station Relay Testing companies want to form a Joint Apprenticeship Training Program. We will need to modify their contracts to do this. We are very eager to be a part of this process. We are researching other programs to set a model for our new program. We have been communicating with WAPA, BPA, SEL Engineering, and Washington State University in Pullman, WA. We will be actively pursuing this in the next several months. We are also discussing moving to a five-year contract while we have the contracts open. This would help the member, employer and customer plan for the future.
Along with two shop stewards we recently accompanied Business Manager Dalzell to the International Construction conference held in Washington, D.C. The first day was for Outside Line and Line Clearance Trimming. There was sharp debate over the new National Portability and Storm Agreements. These agreements were created to increase market share across the country. Although, in our case it has a negative impact since we already hold nearly 100% market share due to the efforts of Business Manager Dalzell. Tom has secured Project Labor Agreement with major utilities to unionize the industry, creating not just work for IBEW members but for Building Trades also.
There were three days of non-stop seminars and workshops: NJATC, Outside Line Construction Apprenticeship/Journeyman training update. The business manager of IBEW Local 1919 made a tree trimming presentation. There were OSHA safety and health seminars with an update on the rule making activities for crane work. There were also seminars regarding political legislative environment of Washington, D.C., grant writing and CIR authority by an independent contractor. This was presented by Robert D. Kurnick, IBEW Legal Counsel of Sherman, Dunn, and Cohen. He was able to give us some pro bono advice on a current grievance involving helicopter long lining.
As reported last month, the Traffic Signal members recently had a shock. National Electric Benefit Fund “NEBF” filed a lawsuit against our largest traffic signal employer, Republic ITS. There was a settlement between the two parties with language changes to the contract. In the past if there were excess monies from the cafeteria health care plan the monies were placed on the member’s paycheck. The settlement will now place those monies into the members National Electrical Annuity Plan “NEAP” accounts.
There are several different strong opinions and lots of emotions from this action. We have held informational meetings and will hold more in the future. There is still a ripple effect from this action, as the members feel they were wronged by the IBEW, when in fact it was NEBF driving the issue. I was one of the IBEW members thinking the pension plans work for us, instead of us working for them. We continue to communicate with the members to explain this action.
Some of the other construction work, such as the AC load control work is running slowly but smoothly. Pole test and treat is ramping up, in spite of ongoing issues with one contractor not advancing workers as agreed to by the contract. There has been a grievance filed and settled, but it seems the remedy hasn’t been implemented as agreed upon, so more work to do in that area.
The AMI work is a success story on all fronts. UPA is moving forward on the SMUD project, everyone seems to be happy. Some of their field managers would like us to bargain their health insurance as the union package is better than the management package we’re told. City of Lodi is bidding an AMI package for meter exchanges right now.
Our members at Wellington Energy are now exchanging over 17,000 meters daily. They are keeping up with PG&E’s ever changing requests to modify meter replacement schedules. We had a few members terminated from Wellington. Four cases directly involved safety; not wearing PPE while exchanging energized electric meters. This is a very serious matter as we have had two different meter accidents in the last three years. One accident resulted in a journeymen being hospitalized with severe burns because he was not wearing PPE. We always stand up for safety and for our members, but when members choose not to wear their PPE it puts the union in very poor position to represent them in a termination case.
Ron Cochran is Assistant Business Manager, IBEW Local 1245