The IBEW 1245 Executive Board has referred a series of proposed bylaws amendments to all Local 1245 units. These amendments affect the process of nominating officers for election, and would also return to a workgroup-oriented method of aligning the officers with the membership they represent.
The proposed amendments can be viewed here (changes are highlighted in yellow).
The changes that are reflected in this proposal are the result of trying to comply with requests of our International body. These changes also aim to provide clarity and consistency to our nomination process, and allow our elected leaders to better represent the membership. The updated sections, and reasons, are as follows:
- Article III, Section 6 – The deletions and additions to this section return to the use of organizational codes as the methodology to group members, relative to the elected seats that they will vote for on the Executive Board or Advisory Council. The use of org codes allows all members working at an employer, headquarters, or line of business to be represented by the same elected officer, as opposed to the interim method of California County alignments that grouped our members for representation based on their home address of record. The former method could result in a split of representation amongst co-workers, with members working side by side having to vote different E Board or Ad Council seats. As a trade union, it is truer to our mission to represent like groups of workers, trades, or skills.
- Article III, Section 7 (a) –There is a slight grammatical change to delete the word “the” before “General Membership Meeting”, and making “Meeting” plural. This was done to align the language outlining the nomination process with the description of General Membership Meetings in Article II, Section 1.
- Article V – This language establishing an Examining Board was requested as an addition to our existing bylaws by the International, to bring consistency with the practice throughout IBEW locals. The addition of this article would require the amendment of all subsequent Article numbers including VI through XVII.
In summary, the proposed changes would accomplish a better organizational structure for E Board and Advisory Council representation, in order to be more representative of the brothers and sisters they are aligned with in their work units. The changes also clear up confusion over the nomination process for officer elections, and would officially sanction our Local’s nomination process that has been practiced for a number of years in several election cycles. And finally, the proposed changes would update language that the International body may approve, where previously it was rejected, and requested that we alter.
Article XVI of the Local 1245 Bylaws stipulate that when the Executive Board refers amendments to Unit Meetings, that they be read once, and acted upon at the next reading. The proposed amendments will be distributed, and read at Unit Meetings in September. Voting on the proposed changes will take place in October at all unit meetings scheduled that month. Any bi-monthly Units not scheduled to meet in October shall vote at their regularly scheduled November meeting.
Feel free to contact me or your business rep with any questions.
–Anthony Brown, IBEW 1245 Senior Assistant Business Manager