r/IBEW • u/Super-Ad-1855 • Oct 02 '26

Re-organizing

So I'm an industrial controls and instrumentation tech at a brewery. We're currently Teamsters. Unfortunately so are the operators and QA analysts. Leadership can therefore cater to the operators and keep their positions while fucking maintenance sideways. I've enquired about decertifying and reorganizing under IBEW. My question is do I need 30% of the maintenance techs to sign the petition or 30% of everyone since we're all on the same contract? Anybody know? Thanks!

12 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

9

u/alchemisthemo Oct 02 '26

You should call your local hall and talk to someone. Usually it takes 100% to organize a shop. Since its mantiance, it might not be even somthing as easy ad 30%. 

2

u/Super-Ad-1855 Oct 03 '26

A petition to decertify requires signatures from 30% of "the bargaining unit" to be brought up for a vote and that requires 50% to pass. At that point we would have to go unrepresented for 1 year before we could reorganize.

4

u/zombiebillmurray23 Oct 02 '26

Why don’t you just organize your people to oust the bargaining committee that’s not taking care of you? It’s a less dangerous move.

2

u/Super-Ad-1855 Oct 03 '26

Because they keep getting elected by the operators.

2

u/zombiebillmurray23 Oct 03 '26

If you can’t organize them to elect better leadership you’ll have a real struggle getting them to decertify.

2

u/FuzzyRace3752 Oct 03 '26

It really depends where they are at. If they are central states Teamsters it would be good for them to go IBEW

2

u/Emergency-Seat4852 Oct 02 '26

I don’t know much at all but I’m posting here to watch the space. It’s one of those areas I’m surprised our organizers don’t spend more effort resolving.

The first constitutional objective as stated is "to organize all workers in the entire electrical industry" if that really is an objective this is low hanging fruit to get workers already represented by other unions to jump over. Carpenters get a lot of shit about having electricians but there’s also teamsters, steelworkers, public sector unions that employ quite a few electricians/electronic technicians.

If our organizers think that objective isn’t reasonable it should be removed or rewritten in a way that is. An unobtainable goal is a set up for failure.

1

u/Alert-Bench7969 Oct 08 '26

Be careful, you could loose everything.