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North Florida Workers Vote for IBEW

June 7, 2005

A 39-employee unit of blue-collar municipal workers in Live Oak, a small rural city in northern Florida, voted overwhelmingly in favor of a voice on the job with the IBEW. Ninety-eight percent of those who participated in the secret ballot poll overseen by the state Public Employees Relations Commission voted for IBEW representation on June 2.

Live Oak municipal workers, who will be members of Local 1205, Tallahassee.

Tallahassee Local 1205 Business Manager Jeff Henderson said he was approached a few months ago with heartbreaking stories from workers: one man worked 30 years and only earned an $11 hourly wage. Another returned from an on-the-job accident to be told he had to work two months without a salary to repay the city for its share of his workers’ compensation benefits.

“You can’t meet these people and say you’re part of the labor union and not help them,” Henderson said. “If anybody I ever met needed a union, it is these people.”

After hearing the stories of the workers, who work in the city’s water, gas, public works and sanitation departments, he and International Representative James Anderson set out to convince the entire unit to vote for the IBEW, house-calling and visiting the work sites to promote the union to the workers, many of whom are altogether unfamiliar with labor unions and afraid of making waves.

“There are not a lot of good jobs in north Florida,” Henderson said. “They do what they’ve got to do to keep a check coming in.”

While the city did not launch an active anti-union campaign, the city council suddenly proposed privatizing the services performed by the workers. Union leaders find the council’s interest in outsourcing the city services more suspect than coincidental, and are considering filing unfair labor practice charges, Henderson said.

Anderson and Henderson are planning to start leafleting the town of 6,500 in advance of a June 14 meeting when the city council will debate whether to contract with a privatization firm. At its last public meeting, the city council heard the firm’s evaluation of the city’s services that described a public works department with little training, no accountability and no plan to solve problems that amounted to a management vacuum. Henderson vowed to organize the outsourcing firm if the city votes it in.

Even without the public campaign, Floridians may be wary of the city’s plans. Henderson said Gov Jeb Bush’s ambitious proposals to outsource much of the state government service turned out to be more expensive than expected.