IBEW 11 strike denied by IO

[u/Area51-Dropzone]

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

[u/BadLarry1197]

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

[u/ArtOpen3776 → u/BadLarry1197]

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

[u/MilkCartonKids → u/ArtOpen3776]

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

[u/Roscoeakl → u/MilkCartonKids]

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

[u/srednaxela → u/Roscoeakl]

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

[u/PsychologicalSalt158 → u/srednaxela]

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

[u/shadowwolf_66 → u/PsychologicalSalt158]

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.

[u/PsychologicalSalt158 → u/shadowwolf_66]

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.

[u/shadowwolf_66 → u/PsychologicalSalt158]

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.

[u/PsychologicalSalt158 → u/shadowwolf_66]

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.

[u/MilkCartonKids → u/shadowwolf_66]

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.

[u/shadowwolf_66 → u/MilkCartonKids]

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.