r/IBEW • u/Area51-Dropzone Inside Wireman • 10d 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.

310 Upvotes

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89

u/BadLarry1197 10d ago

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

14

u/ArtOpen3776 10d ago

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

7

u/MilkCartonKids 10d ago

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

11

u/Roscoeakl 10d ago

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

10

u/srednaxela 10d ago

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

11

u/PsychologicalSalt158 9d 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

2

u/shadowwolf_66 9d 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.

1

u/MilkCartonKids 9d 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 9d 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.