Texas Electricians Open Up Negotiations and Win Big

The building trades can be a tough place for union reformers. Union business is typically conducted behind the scenes, with little involvement from members, while the bosses stall and derail negotiations.

But here in Austin, Texas, our Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 520 got off the hamster wheel and got members active like never before—spurred by the organizing of members like me who had joined the national Caucus of Rank-and-File Electrical Workers (CREW).

Through an unprecedented amount of outreach, actions that brought members in to confront the bosses head-on, and good old-fashioned raising of stakes and expectations, Local 520 won a contract that put decades of closed-off negotiations to shame.

THE CLOSED-DOOR WAY

IBEW represents mostly construction electricians. To get a “job” is to take a call from our hiring hall and be dispatched to any of numerous construction sites spread across several counties. We represent 2,000 workers in different places, with different supervisors. So contract campaigns can present a challenge even to the most committed organizers.

Here’s how IBEW negotiations usually go: The union and the contractors association (NECA) each send about three people into a room once a week. These six people argue behind closed doors over “numbers”: an increase in the wage here, a little more in the retirement plan there. Conditions on the job are typically ignored. Want paid time off? Why make a fuss when you can simply “put the money on the check.” More protections for stewards? Stop talking about something we’ll never give you, and get back to talking dollars and cents.

If the two parties can’t reach a tentative agreement, they refer it to the Council of Industrial Relations in Washington, D.C., an arbitration board composed half-and-half of international union officials and contractors, which will hear both sides and hand down a contract before expiration so as to avoid a work stoppage. Members get no say; the officers of the local union get no say; the local contractors get no say. What CIR gives you is what you get. Naturally members aren’t thrilled about this, and there is appetite for a change.

Three years ago, our local followed the “behind closed doors” strategy to the tee. Although we sent out member surveys, the negotiation team and an advisory committee called the “large negotiations committee” decided that revealing to members what was going on at the table would cause trouble at union meetings.

When a tentative agreement was reached, the $4.75 raise over three years came as a shock to members. Even though it was a 15 percent increase, pandemic-era inflation had cut deeply into our paychecks and was at a sky-high 9 percent at the time. The offer was soundly defeated at an extremely well-attended ratification meeting. The tentative agreement was referred to CIR, which forced it through without a further thought. We got a contract, but it was one that a majority of members opposed.

OFF THE SIDELINES

Rank-and-file activists pushed for a different approach this time that would get members involved and let them take ownership of their contract fight.

We blamed the failure of the 2022 tentative agreement on poor communication. Due to a lack of bargaining updates, members had no idea how the negotiation team had reached the tentative agreement, and therefore were surprised by the relatively small raise, considering Austin’s booming economy at the time. Our arguments prevailed.

This time, through negotiations updates on Facebook, we were able to keep members apprised of the disparity between our offer and the bosses’ offer. The contractors association was none too happy with this. Several of its proposals, meant to provoke the negotiations committee (no initial proposal on wages or benefits, adding kneepads to the tools workers must provide themselves), were embarrassing when revealed to the membership at large.

Transparency is not a goal in itself, however. It’s a means to an end—in this case, getting members into motion and ready for conflict with the bosses. To offer members an alternative to waiting on the sidelines, we organized several rallies, starting with a kick-off that included speeches from members and union leaders, and even a musical performance by Local 520’s very own Corey Baum and his band Croy and the Boys. To turn up pressure, we gathered members outside of the negotiations and stared down contractors as they left.

The rallies were meant to get members ready to fight for paid time off (a rarity in the construction field), higher wages, and everything in between. These priorities were informed by our survey campaign, which instead of simply being emailed to members, had been distributed person to person on jobsites all over the local’s jurisdiction.

ONE-ON-ONE SURVEY

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Reaching everyone with the survey, and one-on-one conversations about what people wanted, and what they would be willing to fight for, required a dedicated network of rank and filers. That’s where the new caucus CREW came in.

In the construction trades, it’s tough for the staff and elected leaders at the union hall to shoulder the whole burden of a fully functional contract campaign. Even if the leaders may favor a more confrontational, organized approach, their work puts them at a remove from members. In Local 520 we are lucky enough to have officers who trusted rank and filers to take the lead in the field—and we did not disappoint.

The more members who heard about our negotiations, the more wanted to get involved. Turnout for the kickoff rally was around 10 percent of the local. And the more we proved ourselves as efficient organizers, the more we were trusted with putting on rallies. Through our new caucus, we were able to divvy up tasks and shop floor outreach, and bring in more members to help.

STRIKE THREAT THRILLED

Things went sideways halfway through the negotiations. NECA, our bosses, were stalling. It seemed to the negotiations team that the arbitrators at CIR would give them a better deal than settling at home. In order to get around this, an idea from the survey came up: to negotiate over the right to strike.

Back when we had first distributed surveys, members of CREW had gone around talking to people about writing in “our right to strike” as a bargaining proposal in the “other” section of the survey. This was a huge leap in terms of militancy, but IBEW locals can restore the right to strike—they just have to do it through negotiations.

Many members were excited to hear that a threat of a strike was a possibility. IBEW tries to drill into its members the idea that labor peace is good for contractors and workers alike, but members of all political stripes are frustrated with steadily declining conditions and feelings of powerlessness.

To get members behind the strike threat and use it to shake up negotiations, we held another contract rally at the union hall and asked members to sign strike pledge cards. The text was simple: “If called upon, I will support my brothers and sisters and go on strike.” One hundred members signed.

BIG BARGAINING CHIP

These actions immediately set a different tone for negotiations. Although NECA may be belligerent towards the union, it usually stalls calmly, knowing that the arbitration council will give the employer group a deal it can stomach. Our push to remove the safety valve of CIR upset that plan. The contractors pulled the ripcord, calling our move illegal because it had not been agreed upon as a topic of negotiation from the start, something required by our contract.

After a few weeks, we were able to trade this chip for paid holidays, though this decision was not made lightly. Using the communication network built up by organizers on the Large Negotiations Committee, we were able to ask members if they were willing to put aside the demand for the right to strike (and all the legal challenges it entailed) in exchange. It was a very close vote by our count, but members were included in the decision-making. This would have been impossible if it weren’t for the network-building that we had done with survey and contract rallies. It was a far cry from normal negotiations.

Eventually Local 520 won a $6.75 raise (from $35.75 to $42.50), four paid holidays, and a variety of other fringe benefits over the three-year contract. Compared to our last negotiations, this was a huge step forward—the largest percentage increase we’ve seen in decades, if ever. Short checks caused by a 24-hour workweek at Thanksgiving are now a thing of the past.

With business as usual, none of this would have happened. Instead, we brought the fight to them and got members involved. Next time, who knows? Maybe we can win back the right to strike.

Paul Steiner is an inside wire journeyworker in IBEW Local 520, and a member of the Caucus of Rank-and-File Electrical Workers.