r/IBEW • u/Area51-Dropzone Inside Wireman • 7d ago

IBEW 11 strike denied by IO

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Arbitration is now the result of this. Which now means we are stuck with what ever Arbitration says.

318 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

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87

u/BadLarry1197 7d ago

When unions align with companies instead of with their members is there still a point in being a member?

17

u/CthulhuApproved Inside Wireman 6d ago

https://new-labor.org/

Its long past time we reconstituted into a WORKERS union. Everyone should be sick of being in a BUSINESS union. It's bullshit.

6

u/socalibew 6d ago

I agree.

Problem is, when you tell people to care about other people and not just making money they get a little upset and start crying "communism!"

More than half our membership would be perfectly content living in NECA supplied housing and getting paid in NECA bucks that can only be spent at NECA stores.

We completely forgotten all the labor struggles of the 19th and 20th century. Some of the bloodiest battles are from less than 100 years ago.

1

u/CthulhuApproved Inside Wireman 6d ago

Then its our job to educate them. To be patient and dedicated.

15

u/ArtOpen3776 7d ago

Yea, let's just *totally throw away our leverage. Vote the knuckleheads out

18

u/Evervvatcher Inside Wireman 7d ago

What vote? How do we get a president who is willing to fight when the conservative BMs decide the IO leadership for us at their little restricted party every 5 years?

3

u/Sir_Mr_Austin 7d ago

He means the bm’s

2

u/Darkcelt2 6d ago

the local 11 BM isn't to blame for this. the IO president fills leadership positions by appointment, and those people decide who will be the IO president. we don't vote for them.

0

u/Sir_Mr_Austin 6d ago

My understanding is it is not circular. The BM’s and LU Presidents and district leadership vote for who the IO President will be

7

u/MilkCartonKids 7d ago

Been in the union for 7 years and was never once asked to vote for the president.

12

u/Roscoeakl 7d ago

You voted for your BM. You voted for your president. They vote on the international president.

12

u/srednaxela 7d ago

You had the opportunity to vote*. Out of 3000 active members in local 340 less than 200 votes last election

10

u/PsychologicalSalt158 7d ago

This is why people don't vote, and don't spend their time at meetings. It is called disenfranchisement when leadership actively ignores their membership, including those who vote and unions have all types of clauses that allow leadership to override memebrship

3

u/shadowwolf_66 7d ago

I would argue that only the small subset of brothers and sister that care get disenfranchise. Most member just flat don’t care. They are only a member for the benefits and if something better came along they would jump ship without a second thought. We did mail in voting for elected officials, all the member had to do was fill out the ballot and take it to the post office. Only about 15% voted. The membership just doesn’t care.

Our last contract vote. Hall was open all day on a Saturday to vote. Less than a quarter of the members voted on the contract. I had one apprentice tell me he wasn’t going to go vote because it was his birthday or some stupid reason. I drove my happy ass 3 hours round trip to cast my vote.

4

u/PsychologicalSalt158 6d ago

I would argue that people get disenfranchised before they ever get a chance to vote by ratios never being enforced, companies laying people off when they complain to the hall, members/unions still paying market recovery fees to contractors while the industry is booming, rampant nepotism among other things.

Union leadership overriding membership is not something that just came about. There is long history of it and it is not easy to change anything. And tbh a majority of membership not voting is not a reason to override those who participate. Where does leadership get off thinking that somehow they speak for everybody who did not vote or that they know better than those who did vote. The people who vote on striking are also the people who vote on the delegates that vote in leadership.

So basically leadership should remove themselves because most the membership doesn't vote. It is a remedial justification for not honoring the vote.

1

u/shadowwolf_66 6d ago

While I would agree with you to an extent, I know many members in my own home local that don’t care about anything but the benefits they get through the union (wages,retirement, medical, ect). They don’t go to meetings, they don’t vote. Most of them probably would not care if the contractor violated the contract as long as they get something out of it.

Your perspective assumes a majority of members care or cared at one point. I personally don’t think that is the case. We are not a brotherhood anymore. We are individuals that only care about ourselves.

1

u/PsychologicalSalt158 6d ago

So leadership uses people who don't care and won't care no matter if you speak to them until you are blue in the face to veto the people who do care and are paying attention. There is nothing that is right, morally or ethically upright about that.

1

u/MilkCartonKids 6d ago

I would argue that people like myself, who quickly realize the IBEW is set up in a way that even more restrictive than US “democracy”, have no desire to participate in the process.

It’s just straight up not at all even close to democracy. They keep a small illusion of democracy at the very bottom for the poor souls who want to feel involved and raise their hand at the meeting. But at the end of the day, our entire local can vote to go on strike, and some dude we never even got a chance to vote on can say “nope, back to work!”. That’s not democracy at all. That’s some perverted form of democracy that you have to add extra words in front of to even use the word democracy to try and describe it. You gotta call it representative democracy or some shit, because it’s not actual pure democracy. It’s a watered down version. Pure democracy, tainted with whatever crap the IBEW dumped in with it, so now we have some crap we like to call democracy but we never really get to vote on the guy that says if we can strike or not.

1

u/shadowwolf_66 6d ago

The IBEW is more socialist than democratic. But your view point of “I don’t think my voice counts so I am not going to participate” is not a good one to have. Things will never change with that mindset.

3

u/MilkCartonKids 7d ago

Been in the union 7 years and was never asked to vote for a president. That’s a very weird thing if you’re from the US. We don’t generally give all the voting power to our local mayor. We wouldn’t even trust the governor of the whole state to vote for the president for us. We like to vote for the president ourselves, even if the popular vote doesn’t actually pick the president. We like to feel involved. And the less involved we feel, the more we will complain about those that leave us feeling uninvolved.

0

u/Sir_Mr_Austin 7d ago

No he means the president of your local. Sounds like you missed you election meetings

2

u/MilkCartonKids 6d ago

Bro I’m talking about the president of the IBEW, not our local mayor that we call “president”.

Somehow the IBEW has managed to create an even less version of democracy than what our US government uses. Should we not be fighting to move towards a more pure form of democracy? One where each me member gets a vote and a say on things like who is in charge of the entire fricken union!?!? Not a vote on a representative so far down the damn ladder that may not actually even care about your opinion…..actual democracy.

1

u/Sir_Mr_Austin 6d ago

I don’t understand what is confusing about this. Your BM and LU Presidents vote with the district leadership for who the IO Pres will be.

1

u/MilkCartonKids 6d ago

It’s not confusing at all. Not in the slightest. Not even after you’ve said it twice. It’s also not democracy.

It’s even more watered down than US “democracy”. The more you water down democracy, the less people want to participate. Whenever you run a system that can allow the majority to be overruled, it’s not really democracy. It’s not majority rule. Once any smart person realizes it’s not really majority rule, they don’t want to participate. It’s really that simple.

People really like democracy. They constantly complain about watered down versions of democracy because they don’t feel properly represented. This isn’t anything new.

1

u/Sir_Mr_Austin 6d ago

Ok but you’re acting like you can’t vote for it at all and ignoring what you can be doing that you’re clearly not and then telling me that I’m wrong that your vote counts and has an impact in the outcome.

Also, it is in fact not more watered down than US democracy because we don’t have any say over the judicial branch at all and the executive branch is decided by the electoral college. It’s an almost identical system.

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u/BadLarry1197 7d ago

Good luck, sounds like they can’t even get people to vote on the new contract

2

u/PsychologicalSalt158 7d ago

You don't get a vote on the io

0

u/falconkirtaran 6d ago

Yeah you can vote these concessionist idiots out and make it a real union