Business Manager's Report Summer 2024

Taken from the August 30th, 2024 Northwest Labor Press "Business Manager's Report" by Garth Bachman IBEW Local 48 Business Manager

Hello members of the IBEW Local 48. I want to tell you all that I am really proud of our membership! I am seeing more and more solidarity on job sites and in our union in general this is where we build strength and cohesion.

Many of you probably remember Mark Brenner from the University of Oregon Labor, Education and Research Center. He was our moderator during the informational meetings we had on Zoom during COVID, and has also moderated wage allocation meetings for us. He is a co-author of the book "Secrets of a Successful Organizer." He is a strong union advocate and holds a PhD in economics. His main focus is teaching and leadership in the overall labor movement. 

We have decided to hire Mark to teach our stewards, staff, executive board and membership ways to internally organize. So, what is internal organizing? We do a lot of work organizing non-union electricians and contractors but how are we doing organizing ourselves every day on the job site? This is what Mark is going to help us do. He will have a class prepared to begin in October for our job stewards and the goal is to then get the rest of our members trained through a train-the-trainer program. This is really exciting, as I believe it will help build more solidarity in our membership, which is vital for any organization, especially a labor organization, to thrive and grow.

As I said, in my opening sentence, there has been a definite increase, at least in my opinion, of our members sticking together. This is the perfect time to get this class started to keep increasing the momentum that all of you have going right now. Keep up the great work and please continue to let the hall know if or when you were having any issues with anything. I cannot promise great results all the time but I can promise we will do our best. Thank you so much for all that each of you do for the IBEW and the electrical industry.