More than 6,000 delegates and guests from across North America and around the world convened for the IBEW’s five-day convention in San Diego, which has been transformed into a union stronghold after two decades of grassroots and workplace organizing. “There are cities with longer histories as a union town, but no place in North America has worked harder or more successfully to become one than San Diego has in the last two decades,” International President Kenneth W. Cooper, who was elected to a new five-year term, told The Electrical Worker. “We are a confident union in an ambitious moment in our history. This is the right place for our moment in the sun.”
Since the IBEW’s founding in 1891, conferences have been held regularly to establish bylaws and set the course for the union’s immediate future. Over 135 years later, the IBEW is now bigger and stronger, but our fight continues. When delegates left the last convention in 2022, the IBEW stood at about 775,000 members strong. Today, total membership is 908,000 and growing. These numbers clearly show that organizing works, but with a viciously anti-labor government in Washington and “right to work” laws constantly looming in state legislatures, there is no time to get complacent. The theme of this year’s convention, “Powering A Better Future,” reflected this neverending fight to grow the IBEW, its local unions, and the labor movement as a whole.
In that spirit, the delegates in San Diego set the IBEW’s agenda for the next five years, with close attention paid to union members’ responsibility to organize all electrical workers, and delegates approved a resolution reaffirming the international union’s obligation to develop organizing strategies across all branches of the IBEW. Resolution 14 encouraged local unions representing construction to pursue opportunities to implement the IBEW's Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training Program (EVITP), and Resolution 15 calls for the IBEW to devote financial and political resources toward encouraging union-built data centers with strong labor standards. These highlighted the importance of securing the IBEW’s place in the fastest-growing sectors of the electrical industry. Other resolutions passed by the delegates focused on the IBEW’s political future, especially with regards to the upcoming midterms and the need for faster contracts after winning union recognition.
A full report on Convention actions will be published in the next edition of the Electrical Union World newspaper.
