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Governor Brown at California State Association of Electrical Workers conference

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Talking politics with U.S. Congressman Mark DeSaulnier

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If you are not prepared to fail, you will never come up with a new idea

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Moving Forward

3 years goes by fast.  We have been successful on several fronts.

We’ve worked extremely hard at reestablishing our relationship with our employers.

Maintained our Health & Welfare benefits, conditions and wages during our lowest point of the economic downturn.

Securing a 3 year contract that includes Foreman training, first wage increase since 2012 and stability.

Just to name a few!

these are all building blocks in an effort to reclaim OUR industry.

what I am most proud of is: The support that YOU, the membership of Local 302 have given me.

Thank you for the opportunity to serve you.

Together we will be successful!

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International President Ed Hill addressed the IBEW 9th District Organizer’s Conference in Las Vegas about our industry and our Union.

His message was simple: IBEW 9th District market share has fallen to 30%.  Union membership is falling. Our old, ineffective methods of promoting our union must be replaced with new tactics and new ideas.

Gone are the days when we could count on jobs being union jobs. We must embrace and include input from our membership.

We can no longer rely on others to do our work for us, whether it is local politicians, our contractors, or our neighbors.

Being a union member means more than driving around with a union seal on the back window of your pick-up truck. It means getting back to the ideals of our union – skilled and knowledgeable craftsmen performing an honest day’s work in a safe environment for a fair rate of pay.

President Hill delivered this sobering message that holds us all accountable – from the highest officers of our Local to the newest apprentice.

No one is born into the union - we are all “organized”.  Hopefully, we can return our brotherhood to a path of success before it is too late.     

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Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Recently, I announced my intention to run for the office of Business Manager of Local 302.

Our Local and our membership has had a rough past few years, but it will take more than time and wishful thinking to restore our Local to the position of dignity and prosperity we once enjoyed.

We cannot simply blame the “economic downturn”!  Surrounding Bay Area locals are experiencing a renewal in jobs and growth, while we remain stagnant with a quarter of our members out of work and another 15% working out of neighboring  Locals.

No, it is many of our current policies that must change if we are to chart a new course toward success.

For example:

When elected, I intend to form a Business Development / Market Recovery program.  Our members pay far too much in dues to hear “that doesn’t work” as an excuse to sit idly by.  We must involve our members and the leadership from other locals to find what DOES work, then implement with vigor.

I will expand the role of the Political Action Committee.  It will be elevated from a “committee of convenience” to a defined committee made up of active members who assist the PAC chairman and Assistant Business Manager in their important duties.  This is simply too important and too much work for just one man!

We must change the role of Job Targeting.  We must cease the policy of “buying jobs” and, instead use the funds to go after specific non-union contractors with the goal of either driving them out of town or sign them up as union contractors.

This program has worked across the nation and is endorsed by the International Office.  It will work here, too! 

We will expand the Training Center to keep up with the changing technology of our industry.  We will have more specific classes designed for journeyman wireman - to increase our individual skills rather than simply gather hours toward certification.

To accomplish these goals will take a lot of hard work and dedication.  It will also take an involved membership; one that feels welcome enough to share ideas with a leadership who listens rather than dictates – and who works as hard as you.

It will take your vote and your support, which is the point of this letter.

Please contact me at ronbennett41@gmail.com and share your ideas about making this a better and more successful Local.

Together, we can do this!  Isn’t that what unions are all about?

Fraternally,

Ron  Bennett

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Sometimes, corporate greed flares with such intensity that it ignites public outrage.

This happened in April when an eight-story, recklessly-built clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh crashed. Hundreds of workers were crushed by slabs of concrete, having been ordered by the ruthless factory owner to continue working, even though the structure's collapse was imminent. Public rage at such scorn for the value of workers' lives led to mass protests across the country and the jailing of the owner. Good.

But what about his equally-culpable cohorts – the CEOs of Walmart, GAP, and other retailing behemoths who've instilled this culture of greed throughout their global supplchain? They've dictated a corporate order that compels shortcuts on safety and rewards unscrupulous factory owners. Walmart and other major clothing marketers surged into Bangladesh in recent years specifically because it has the world's cheapest, least-protected laborers. Corporate bosses know that Bangladeshi factories are hell-holes where nightmares constantly come true.

Less than six months ago, a horrific fire in another factory in this same city killed 112 workers who were making clothing for these same giants. Walmart subsequently responded by pledging "zero tolerance" for such haphazard manufacturing, loudly launching a $1.6 million worker safety academy in Bangladesh… and blah-blah-blah. It was pure, disgraceful, PR bullstuff – and it changed nothing.

Meanwhile, Walmart refuses to sign a legally-binding Fire and Building Safety Agreement put forth by labor advocates. It would require the profiteers to make all their factories safe, open each one to independent inspectors – and stop their senseless tolerance for the serial killing of garment workers. 

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You see them in stores across our country and around the world: colorful and stylish clothing with happy-sounding brand names like Children's Place, Papaya, Joe Fresh, Free Style Baby, and Mango. But you don't see the factories where these cheerful garments are made, nor are we shown the strained faces of the impoverished workers who make them, paid little more than a dollar a day for long, hard shifts. We only catch a glimpse of the grim reality sewn into these happy brands when yet another factory is in the news for collapsing or burning down, bringing a grotesque death to hapless workers trapped inside. It's a horror that keeps happening. And after each one, the brand-name marketers and retail profiteers cluck with sympathy for the families of the dead and decry the "tragic accident." As Scott Nova of the Workers Rights Consortium put it after the most recent atrocity, when a Bangladesh factory collapsed and crushed thousands of garment workers, "The response is always the same: Vague promises and public relations dodges, while the pile of corpses grows even higher." Is there something about clothing factories that makes them disaster magnets? Yes – the massive gravitational pull of corporate greed. Not merely the greed of sleazy factory owners, but most significantly the greed of such "respectable" retailers as Walmart, Benetton, GAP, and H&M. The April collapse in Bangladesh was not an "accident," but the inevitable result of a Western business model that demands such low prices from offshore suppliers that worker safety is their dead-last priority. In the corporate hierarchy, death is coldly built into the consumer price and routinely accepted in the boardrooms as a justifiable means of adding another dime to the bottom line. 

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Days Gone By

Many years ago, our Union Hall was a small block-and-wood building on Contra Costa Boulevard in Pacheco.  Large plate glass windows looked out onto an ocean of asphalt that served as a parking area, barely off the road.

This was also a time when we had a percentage deducted from our paychecks and placed in a personal vacation account. Every year, Wiremen would come down to the Hall and fill out a Vacation Withdrawal Card, which would then be taken to the bank to get our vacation money.

One Spring day, young Journeyman Clyde Ferriera was sent to the Hall to pick up a handful of Vacation Withdrawal Cards for the men cloistered inside the Shell Refinery.  However, the only vehicle available was a Line Truck!

Line Trucks – if you have never seen one – are large multi-ton lumbering beasts with aerial booms and post-hole digging attachments hanging off the side. I think if they were any bigger, they would have their own ZIP code.

And the vehicles that are stationed in the refineries are typically in a constant state of barely operational disrepair.  Don’t be surprised if the window crank has been replaced with a pair of vise-grips and the wipers don’t work – if there are even wipers at all.

This one was no exception.  Evidently, there was an issue with the braking system.  To make it come to a stop, the driver had to pump the brake pedal several times, building up the hydraulic pressure in the lines to get the brakes to work.  Driving this thing and keeping it from mowing down anything in its path took a certain amount of skill and familiarity with the proper technique, but since it was usually driven by a designated member of the line crew, it was quietly accepted as part of the necessary skillset.

Unfortunately, no one told Clyde about this particular vehicular idiosyncrasy.

So, as Clyde guided this cruise-ship sized behemoth toward the Hall, he could be forgiven for thinking that using all of his strength to turn the huge steering wheel or shifting through the gears on a straight-cut gear box was the most he would have to endure to operate this most inappropriate vehicle.

As he made the last right turn from Contra Costa Boulevard into the Union Hall parking lot, creaking and lumbering toward the Union Hall itself, he applied the brakes.

Nothing.

He looked down and pushed them again as the space available for docking this beast was cut precariously in half.

Still nothing.

In a destructive slow-motion ballet, the truck with its boom and appendages swinging and creaking jumped the curb and crashed right through the plate glass window with a wide-eyed Clyde Ferriera pumping furiously on the brake pedal, finally able to make it stop.

Then Business Manager John Hunter came running out of his office (fortuitously located away from the recently ventilated façade), saw the truck and asked its shaken driver, “Are you O.K.?”

Still trying to digest the events of the past few seconds, all Clyde could do was nod. It may have occurred to him that if he had not figured out the specialized braking technique, it may have continued right out the back of the building!

Clyde and Business Manager Hunter walked past a stunned office staff to call the contractor’s office and let them know what has just happened.

Upon hearing the story, the first thing Hank Dias - the owner of Contra Costa Electric at that time – asked was “Is he O.K.?”

Assured that he was, they began to discuss what had to be done to extricate the truck, secure the building, and facilitate necessary repairs to both.

Clyde, fortunately, was unscathed.  Except for some extra laundry duty when he got home.

There are many aspects to this story – some comic, some social, and some which makes me lament the passing of this more respectful time.

Note the absence of attorneys.  There was no need!  Each office immediately worked together to correct the problem.  Contra Costa Electric sent some men and plywood over to seal up the hole in the building and retrieved the truck.  John Hunter began coordinating the permanent repair.

But the first thing either man thought about was the condition of the driver.

Contractors seemed to understand that the workers make them money, not cost them money.  Labor seemed to understand that without the contractor’s skills at getting the contracts to do the work, there are no jobs to do.

We are not adversaries, we are partners. We may appear to be on opposite sides, but we are on the same coin.

Somehow, we have managed to stray from this philosophy.  Sometimes, it seems like we have been having an argument so long that we have forgotten what the original disagreement was about.

This has been happening over a long period of time, not just the past few years.  Slowly, there has been an erosion of respect.  Between each other, between crafts, in our industry, and between our partners.

It is time to re-institute that as a basic tenant of our working conditions.  We need to learn how to respect each other and celebrate our common mission rather than continually focus on our differences.

Working is difficult enough without making it adversarial.  It is a happier and more productive environment if we learn to get along.

Even if someone crashes a truck into your building!

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Events

With the Holidays and the Presidential election behind us, our Local looks optimistically toward a busy 2014.

Our Training Center continues to offer classes to increase our members knowledge and provide a well-trained workforce.  

Along with the typical Code Review and OSHA Safety Classes is an Electrical Vehicle Residential Charging Station Installation class.  This illustrates our commitment to our industry and the future as well.

Our Annual Local 302 Picnic will be held on July 13, so mark your calendars now. It may seem like a long way off, but these things have a way of sneaking up and are upon us before you know it!

But the biggest event for this year will be the Local Union Elections.  This year, we will elect officers from Recording Secretary and various boards all the way up to the Business Manager / Financial Secretary.

One of our great strengths is that we choose our leadership from our own members. If you would like to become more involved in the workings of our Local Union, please consider joining one of the committees or running for an office.

And by all means, come to the meetings!     

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For the past 20 years, we have heard a lot about creating jobs and keeping them here in the U.S.

During that time, many American jobs have been lost to other countries. And in this day and age where even the work force is a commodity, the reduced demand for labor makes it easy to keep wages stagnant.

But there are jobs and there are professions. Jobs may be exported, professions rarely are.

A job can be anything done by anybody. A set of tasks, something you “try”, an eight-hour period away from home. People who work at low-skilled jobs can be easily replaced. There is no shortage of people to fill these jobs.

But a professional is highly trained and able to fulfill a need with a skill set that not everyone has.  It requires intelligence, education, and a commitment to their craft.

Their profession is their art.  They may be an accountant, an attorney, a therapist… or an electrician. But they are part of a very select group trained and skilled enough to practice their trade. And when they are not around, you can’t just go to any street corner and get one who can.

To become a “professional”, one must develop their skills and searches for ways to expand them. Our trade is an example of a labor profession.

  Being an electrician is not just a job, it is a profession - the same as a lawyer, a doctor, or an airplane pilot.

To the untrained eye we do not appear to have much in common with those that wear a suit and tie and hang a shingle outside their door.

We wear work clothes.  We often work outside.  Our hands are often dirty and bruised. But we apply a bridle on the major motivating force in the world today - electricity – and we help channel its energy to light homes and buildings and power the industrial production of the world today.

But this motivating force has a devastating side as well, not only for us but for those that use it. It requires a firm and skilled hand to keep its destructive potential at bay.  Not just anybody has the skills to manage this task, day in and day out.

And no matter where the equipment is made or the power is generated; we are the skilled personnel who make it work here.

As wiremen, we are in a unique position.  Although we may have menial-looking aspects to our trade, we stand on the sharp blade of technology. To be successful practitioners, we must integrate the menial hand-work with the Physics and technology of a state-of-the-art industry. 

There is no export of our application, it must be applied locally.

But with this profession comes responsibility. If we are to maintain our equal partner status with the visionaries who apply the power of electricity to world industry, we must keep up with the rapid changes in our industry.

As our economy leads the world back to prosperity, it is the professionals - not untrained day-workers – that will keep it moving in the right direction.

So we must all make a choice and a commitment. Stay focused, constantly hone and upgrade our skills, and add “professional pride” to our tool list.  If we continue to be the best at the application of our craft, our industry will continue moving forward while the opportunities for us stay firmly rooted right here. 

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History in the Making

The recent tragedy in Bangladesh reminds me of The Shirtwaist Factory fire 100 years ago when 147 young women died in a fire as a result of safety regulations.  When tragedies like the Shirtwaist Factory fire happen in the United States, the public becomes outraged.  Action by the government is demanded.  This is the roll of the government.  ‘A government for the people by the people’ not just 1% of the people.

Republicans and right wing extremists want a smaller roll of government.  They want to eliminate all of the regulations that have been installed over the last 150 years that protect each and everyone of us.  Be it public safety, environmental, job safety or our right to bargain collectively.  If the so called job creators have no regulation to contend with, then they can create more jobs.  “We cannot compete with China or any other developing Nation with government intervention,” say the job creators.

China has no government agency that oversees worker safety, workers rights, product safety or environmental protection.  Without any government regulation, society  faces a number of issues such as air and water pollution, deforestation, worker safety, building and housing safety.  This does not just affect China, it affects the entire world’s  quality of life.

           The lack of building and safety regulations in Bangladesh cost 110 workers their lives.  The United States went through this over 100 years ago.  We call this ‘The Industrial Revolution’.    Men and women fought and died to improve conditions.  The sacrifice of these brave men and women created the middle class.  Laws were created and regulations put into place to protect the public.  

Are we going back to those days?  Michigan just became the 24th state to give up their right to bargain collectively under the promise of creating more jobs.  Once again the powerful 1% have bought legislation that takes away the voice of the middle class.  To create jobs,  the Job Creatorswill have to cut costs.  Wages will be lowered, health benefits will be eliminated and pensions will no longer exist.  Working class people will not have a voice, it will be dog eat dog.  What Michigan gained is a right-to-work for less.

California narrowly defeated the first step of becoming a right-to-work for less state by voting down Prop 32.  This is the republicans way of taking away our voice as an organization that fights for a piece of the American pie.  Are we as a nation heading forward to the past?  

Don’t  let your voice be silenced. The fight is not over, it has just begun!  Protect your livelihood,  your future, your kids’ future, we owe it to our forefathers.  Get involved with your Local Union and have your voice heard!

Ron Bennett

President

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Introduction

Ron Bennett, Candidate for Business Manager/ Financial Secretary

Personal Information:

Grew up in Concord, California

Graduated - Concord High School 1976 

Lived in Pittsburg in 1988 

Returned to Concord in 2000

Came from a Union / Building Trades Family:

Grandfather, Father, Uncles, Brother Union Pipefitters.  

Father and Brother  members UA Local 342

IBEW Work History:

Accepted into IBEW LU 302's Apprentice Training Program May 1985.  

Graduated as Journeyman Wireman June 1989

Foreman  1991 (5 JW's)  

Foreman  1993- 95  (12 JW's , 8 AP's)  Bechtel Clean Fuels Project – Chevron Refinery

General Foreman  1995  (Foremen, 30 JW's, 10 AP's)  Bechtel  Clean Fuels Project  - Chevron Refinery

Foreman  2000 - 2006  (various small commercial; light industrial and school work)

Steward   2008 – 2009 (210 JW’s and AP’s) Conoco- Philllips HEP Project

Steward  2009-2010  (40 JW’s and AP’s) John Muir Hospital Concord  

IBEW Local 302 Experience and Involvement: 

LU302 Welding Instructor  1989 - 1992, 

Trained 75  2nd Year Apprentices 

Trained 30JW’s - Journeyman Upgrade Class

President of Local 302 -  2010 to Present

Political Action Committee Recorder - 2007 to present

Sitting as Local President on all committees - Recreation Committee, Safety Committee, Political Action Committee,  Sick Committee, Inside Wireman Committee

IBEW Local 302 “Member to Member” Project

IBEW PAC Committee “Precinct Walk” Program

Manager – IBEW Local 302 Softball Team

Union Experience and Involvement Outside Local 302:

IBEW National Conference Attendee

Building and Construction Trades Conference Attendee

IBEW 9th District Progress Meeting Attendee

California State Association of Electrical Workers Conference Attendee

National Joint Apprentice Training Committee Conference Attendee

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Thank You

In spite of the fact that it was our nation that launched the Great Democracy Experiment over 200 years ago, Americans seem to be in a constant state of education as far as elections are concerned.

In the 2000 Presidential election, we learned the value – and power – of a handful of votes.  

All it took was a little over 200 Florida voters, exercising their civic duty, to decide the outcome of the entire election.

When they walked up to the ballot box, they probably thought their votes would be diluted into the sea of other votes across the nation and not really count for much on their own.

In the end, however, they determined the winner of the highest office in the land.  

Then, over the next few years, we saw incredible amounts of money injected into politics, both for individual public office as well as Propositions.  The enormous political budgets caused many great public debates and articles about the influence of money in politics.

But we also have seen how the big spenders are frequently not the big winners.

Corporate executive Meg Whitman out spent Attorney General Jerry Brown by a ratio of 6 to 1, only to lose the California Governor’s race.

In spite of the nearly equal spending by both sides of Proposition 32 (for a total of $135 Million!), the anti-union proposition was defeated by a lop-sided ratio of 56 against to 44 in favor.

Recently and in spite of Mitt Romney outspending President Obama, both from his own campaign and outside donor PACs, the end result kept President Obama in the White House - and showed him to have the best “ground game”.

From local elections to statewide propositions and elected positions, it is the campaign that best educates the voters in a personal way who often take the day.

Not that money is not important - it is!  It is necessary to get your message in front of as many voters as possible.  But once that message is delivered, it takes a person-to-person contact to bring it home.  Dollars – no matter how many – simply cannot do that.

A good ground game – or at least the potential for one - is one thing Organized Labor has been able to count on.

IBEW Local 302 has been a large contributor to this personal door-to-door effort, both in manpower and coordination.  

On December 19, our Local will be hosting a dinner thanking all of the members who helped bring our political message to the population at large.  Every effort counts.  And we have seen time after time that personal involvement absolutely matters.

For most of us, elections are something that happens every few years.

But for our Assistant Business Manager Tom Hansen, it seems like they are an everyday occurrence.

We are lucky to have him as our representative to the Contra Costa County Central Labor Council.  

Evidently they feel the same way.

That is why he was named Contra Costa County Central Labor Council AFL-CIO and Building and Construction Trades “Labor Leader of the Year”!

In the final analysis, good old-fashioned legwork is still very important in political elections.  Congratulations and much thanks to Tom Hansen and all of those who helped our friends in high places remain in a position to further the cause of a safe and respectful work environment for all Americans!

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A funny skit comparing electricians and millwrights.

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Member to Member

Our local has been very involved with the International’s outreach project known as “Member to Member”.

Several of our members have received training on how to reach out to our local members that have gotten away from local union involvement.  We visit these members at their homes to see how they are doing.  It gives us the opportunity get to know them all over again. 

It is a way of saying “Hello, Brother – welcome back!”

Local Unions are more than just hiring halls, and their members are much more than workers.

We are also family members, parents, students, and citizens.  We share more than a vocation, we share the common experience of belonging to a community.  We not only care about jobs, we care about quality of life outside the workday as well – the one we share with our families and neighbors.

“Member to Member” not only brings our brothers back to our Local Union, but it puts our Local Union in touch with its members and their families – and the part of their lives that happen outside the workplace. 

Brothers and sisters are part of a family, and our Brotherhood is our family in the community.  

Welcome back!    

Bob Lilley  P.S.

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Vote for your Job!