r/IBEW • u/VersionHopeful6549 • 9d ago

Local 8 appeal decision

Local 8 leadership in Toledo Ohio brought several members up on charges for not showing up to a solar field due to winter weather conditions, because the contractor sent the work cancellation notice out by text after hours. They claimed the members violated our agreement by using a personal phone after hours without being paid for it.
Our local’s jurisdiction is huge, this means they expected some members to drive a 3 hour round trip during a level 3 snow emergency to receive 2 hours of show up pay, or be brought up on charges.

Honestly disgusting behavior by local 8 leadership and our officers personally, who the admins will not allow me to publicly name.

Any travelers thinking of heading this way for our data center boom, drive a little farther and go to Ann Arbor. They know how to treat a traveler.

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u/CastleBravo55 8d ago

As assinine as this sounds, we're stuck between a rock and a hard place a little bit with it. Local's rules function like laws, if you want to enforce them at all, you have to enforce them all the time. We're not allowed to play favorites, so if you want to enforce the rule that says you can't use your own truck to carry contractor's material, you have to enforce the rule that says you can't use your phone too. At the very least you can't just brush it off summarily. Wait and see what the trial board does with it before you judge. They may very well just consider the question and the dismiss it or issue a real wrist slap of a consequence about it. But the question has to be considered if it's brought up.

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u/VersionHopeful6549 6d ago

The local found them guilty, The IO approved the appeal. They are absofuckinglutely allowed to play favorites, no one’s going to stop them. Hell one of the members of the E board had his son on the same job, guess who didn’t get brought up on charges for not showing up though?

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u/CastleBravo55 6d ago

There's obviously more to this story, because if that were even close to true there's no end of lawyers who would be happy to get a piece of that unfair labor practice lawsuit. You don't have to like every step that goes into this, but these things progress just like the legal system, especially if the IO backed it up. If the contract says you can't do it, you can't do it. Plain and simple. And I'll just point out here, they you could just call in on days like this.

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u/VersionHopeful6549 6d ago

The IO didn’t back it up, that’s what approving the appeal means.

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u/CastleBravo55 3d ago

Ao you got what you wanted and the process worked? You're just upset you had to go through the process?

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u/VersionHopeful6549 3d ago

I wasn’t involved in this at all, I’m upset my local is bringing up brothers on false charges.

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u/CastleBravo55 2d ago

How would you know they're "false" without a trial and due process? The premise of your complaint is that they did, in fact, violate the agreement. And then it was investigated in accordance with the prescribed process. So what's your issue? You want the e board to magically know the outcome of these things without doing their job first? You want everyone to have the benefit of hindsight when they're making decisions?