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The lineman said that he and his co-workers were dissatisfied with favoritism in promotions and with changes in their medical insurance. He wouldn’t give his name or say where he worked, but he asked to meet a Local 295 organizer on a local hospital’s parking lot. Rimmer and Assistant Business Manager David Stephens were assigned to meet with the caller. They expected to encounter one or two workers or maybe none if they got cold feet. Instead, they got a “once in a lifetime experience for an organizer.”

Fifteen utility workers showed up on the parking lot in orange shirts. They included linemen and secretaries at South Central Electric Cooperative, which serves 10,000 customers in parts of eight counties in South Central Arkansas.

Self-organizing had started in a restaurant. “Six of us were eating lunch on a bad day at work,” says Colby Wells, a third-year lineman apprentice. “We all ended up agreeing that a union would fix our problems.”

A month later, 20 workers out of 24 eligible bargaining unit employees had signed union authorization cards. In December, the workers voted 19 to 2 for IBEW representation.

“I’m 60 years old and have been in the IBEW for 40 years and I have never seen a more eager group with as much commitment,” says Rimmer. Some members had heard about the union from a former co-worker who had gone to work for an IBEW-represented utility. Others had visited www.ibew.org.

The organizing campaign was assisted by Tenth District International Rep. Dale McCoy and International Lead Organizer Joseph Skinner. McCoy brought his experience as a lineman to meetings with the co-op’s workers. “The average guy can’t make it as a utility lineman. They are a special people. Yet the co-op’s manager didn’t respect them,” says Rimmer. But McCoy spoke the linemen’s language.

Organizers told workers to expect management to wage an anti-union campaign. Their warnings helped when an anti-union consultant was brought in to spread misleading information about unions. The more the consultant talked, the more solid the workers became, says Rimmer. “We told the truth and stayed positive.”

Wells said that workers rejected management’s misinformation because they had their fill of arbitrary disciplinary write-ups and wages that lagged far behind the industry average. As the co-op constantly raised medical insurance deductibles, Rennie Scott, a five-year journeyman lineman and associate engineer, says he knew that he needed a union contract to “lock down” benefits and better his working conditions.

First contract negotiations are underway. Some of the new members returned to the IBEW Web Site and ordered T-shirts to build solidarity on the job to support their bargaining committee.

“We’re not dying like some folks are saying. I think unions are coming back,” says Rimmer.

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Johnny Rimmer, the son of a lineman, knew that his father was one of a special breed. But Rimmer, a journeyman wireman and membership development coordinator of Little Rock, Ark., Local 295 gained new respect for the legendary trade when a lineman called his local union hall last October.