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Municipal Utility Workers Join IBEW

November 1, 2011

A group of nearly a dozen utility workers voted to join Springfield, Mo., Local 753 in August, making Marshall Municipal Utilities the third municipal power company in southwest Missouri to vote for IBEW representation in the last three years.

Says Organizing Coordinator Brian Heins, who worked on the campaign:

They were fed up with what they felt was lack of respect on the job. And they knew IBEW linemen and saw how a union could better the workplace.

Workers also expressed concern about lack of company safety regulations and substandard training.

Says Local 753 Business Manager Dick Wilson:

The company didn’t even have a safety manual available.

Marshall follows on the heels of organizing victories in the towns of Nixa and Lebanon, where more than 20 linemen and tree trimmers voted to join Local 753 in 2009.

The reasons for joining are similar, says Wilson:

They want respect and a voice in the workplace.

Many of the newly organized utility workers had worked side by side with IBEW members during storm duty following the Joplin tornadoes and they learned from their union co-workers about the better wages, stronger benefits and superior training that went with collective bargaining.  

Says Wilson:

Our members are the best organizers because they are able to talk other workers – lineman to lineman – about the benefits of union membership. When the nonunion workers go home, they then get together with their co-workers and give us a call.

Heins says he has seen an uptick in interest in organizing among nonunion utility workers across the state in the last couple years.

He says:

Missouri is a low-wage state and many linemen are frustrated by stagnant pay and lack of on-the-job rights. But because of their exposure to the IBEW, they see that there is an alternative.

Photo used under a Creative Commons License from Flickr user ukslim.