International Brotherhood Of Electrical Workers - Wikipedia

North American trade union International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers

Abbreviation	IBEW
Formation	1891 (1891)
Type	Trade union
Headquarters	Washington, DC, US
Location	Canada Panama United States
Membership	860,000 (2025)
President	Kenneth W. Cooper
Secretary-treasurer	Paul Noble
Affiliations	AFL-CIO (North America's Building Trades Unions) Canadian Labour Congress
Website	ibew.org
Formerly called	National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (1891–1899)

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) is a labor union that represents approximately 860,000 workers and retirees[1] in the electrical industry in the United States, Canada,[2] Guam,[3][4] Panama,[5] Puerto Rico,[6] and the US Virgin Islands;[6] in particular electricians, or inside wiremen, in the construction industry and lineworkers and other employees of public utilities. The union also represents some workers in the computer, telecommunications, and broadcasting industries, and other fields related to electrical work.

Overview

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The organization now known as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers was founded in 1891, two years before George Westinghouse won the electric current wars by lighting the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition with alternating current, and before homes and businesses in the United States had begun receiving electricity. It is an international organization, based on the principle of collective bargaining. Its international president is Kenneth W. Cooper and is affiliated with the AFL–CIO.[7]

The beginnings of the IBEW were in the Electrical Wiremen and Linemen's Union No. 5221, founded in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1890.[8][9] By 1891, after sufficient interest was shown in a national union, a convention was held on November 21, 1891, in St. Louis. At the convention, the IBEW, then known as the National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (NBEW), was officially formed. The American Federation of Labor gave the NBEW a charter as an AFL affiliate on December 7, 1891. The union's official journal, The Electrical Worker, was first published on January 15, 1893, and has been published ever since. At the 1899 convention in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the union's name was officially changed to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.[citation needed]

The union went through lean times in its early years, then struggled through six years of schism during the 1910s, when two rival groups each claimed to be the duly elected leaders of the union. In 1919, as many employers were trying to drive unions out of the workplace through a national open shop campaign, the union agreed to form the Council on Industrial Relations, a bipartite body made up of equal numbers of management and union representatives with the power to resolve any collective bargaining disputes. That body still functions today, and has largely resolved strikes in the IBEW's jurisdiction in the construction industry.[citation needed]

In September 1941, the National Apprenticeship Standards for the Electrical Construction Industry, a joint effort among the IBEW, the National Electrical Contractors Association, and the Federal Committee on Apprenticeship, were established. The IBEW added additional training programs and courses as needed to keep up with new technologies, including an industrial electronics course in 1959 and an industrial nuclear power course in 1966.[citation needed]

Today, the IBEW conducts apprenticeship programs for electricians, linemen, and VDV (voice, data, and video) installers (who install low-voltage wiring such as computer networks), in conjunction with the National Electrical Contractors Association, under the auspices of the National Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee (NJATC), which allows apprentices to "earn while you learn." In Canadian jurisdictions, the IBEW does not deliver apprenticeship training, but does conduct supplemental training for government trained apprentices and journeypersons, often at little or no cost to its members. The IBEW local 353 Toronto requires all apprentices to be registered with the JAC (Joint Apprenticeship Council) for a number of safety courses, pre-apprenticeship training, pre-trade school courses, supplementary training, and pre-exam courses.[citation needed]

The IBEW's membership peaked in 1972 at approximately 1 million members. The membership numbers were in a slow decline throughout the rest of the 1970s and the 1980s, but have since stabilized. One major loss of membership for the IBEW came about because of the court-ordered breakup at the end of 1982 of AT&T, where the IBEW was heavily organized among both telephone workers and in AT&T's manufacturing facilities.[citation needed] In 1988, 30 percent of American construction work was unionized while the IBEW had 40 percent of electrical-related construction.[10] Membership as of 2020 stands at about 775,000, according to their official website.[citation needed]

The IBEW supports new construction of nuclear power plants in the United States.[11]

Leadership

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International presidents

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• Henry Miller (1891–1893)
• Queren Jansen (1893–1894)
• H. W. Sherman (1894–1897)
• J. H. Maloney (1897–1899)
• Thomas Wheeler (1899–1901)
• W. A. Jackson (1901–1903)
• Frank Joseph McNulty (1903–1919) – first full-time, paid president of the union; elected at Salt Lake City Conference in 1903, retired at New Orleans Conference in 1919
• James Patrick Noonan (acting president, 1917, president 1919–1929) – died in office
• Henry H. Broach (1929–1933)
• Daniel W. Tracy (1933–1940)
• Edward J. Brown (1940–1947)
• Daniel W. Tracy (1947–1954)
• J. Scott Milne (1954–1955)
• Gordon M. Freeman (1955–1968)
• Charles H. Pillard (1968–1986)
• John Joseph (Jack) Barry (1986–2001)
• Edwin D. (Ed) Hill (2001–2015)
• Lonnie R. Stephenson (2015–2023)
• Kenneth W. Cooper (since 2023)

International secretary-treasurers

[edit] 1891: James T. Kelly 1897: H. W. Sherman 1905: Peter W. Collins 1912: Charles P. Ford 1925: Gustave M. Bugniazet 1947: J. Scott Milne 1954: Joseph D. Keenan 1976: Ralph A. Legion 1985: Jack F. Moore 1997: Edwin D. Hill 2001: Jeremiah J. O'Connor 2005: Jon F. Walters 2008: Lindell K. Lee 2011: Sam Chilia 2017: Kenneth W. Cooper 2023: Paul A. Noble

List of IBEW conventions

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[12][13]

#	Location	Date
1	St. Louis, Missouri	November 1891
2	Chicago, Illinois	November 1892
3	Cleveland, Ohio	November 1893
4	Washington, DC	November 1895
5	Detroit, Michigan	November 1897
6	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania	October 1899
7	St. Louis, Missouri	October 1901
8	Salt Lake City, Utah	September 1903
9	Louisville, Kentucky	September 1905
10	Chicago, Illinois	Sept./ Oct. 1909
11	Rochester, New York	September 1911
12	Boston, Massachusetts	September 1913
13	St. Paul, Minnesota	Sept./ Oct. 1915
14	Atlantic City, New Jersey	September 1917
15	New Orleans, Louisiana	September 1919
16	St. Louis, Missouri	Sept./ Oct. 1921
17	Montreal, Quebec	August 1923
18	Seattle, Washington	August 1925
19	Detroit, Michigan	August 1927
20	Miami, Florida	September 1929
21	St. Louis, Missouri	October 1941
22	San Francisco, California	September 1946
23	Atlantic City, New Jersey	September 1948
24	Miami, Florida	October 1950
25	Chicago, Illinois	Aug./ Sept. 1954
26	Cleveland, Ohio	Sept./ Oct. 1958
27	Montreal, Quebec	September 1962
28	St. Louis, Missouri	September 1966
29	Seattle, Washington	Sept./ Oct. 1970
30	Kansas City, Missouri	September 1974
31	Atlantic City, New Jersey	October 1978
32	Los Angeles, California	September 1982
33	Toronto, Ontario	September 1986
34	St. Louis, Missouri	October 1991
35	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	September 1996
36	San Francisco, California	September 2001
37	Cleveland, Ohio	September 2006
38	Vancouver, British Columbia	September 2011
39	St. Louis, Missouri	September 2016
40	Chicago, Illinois	May 2022
41	San Diego, California	September 2026
42	TBA	September 2031

See also

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• IBEW Building
• Henry Miller Museum

References

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1. ^ "Home". International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Retrieved November 3, 2023.
2. ^ "IBEW Canada - The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers". IBEW Canada. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
3. ^ "Hawaii Local Bridges Pacific with Guam Expansion". International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. March 2012. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
4. ^ "Local 1260 Reaches Guam Raytheon Agreement". International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. October 2002. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
5. ^ "Panama, IBEW Sign Training Agreement for Panama Canal Expansion". International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. June 2009. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
6. ^ a b "IBEW Local Union Directory". IBEW. Retrieved 2021-08-21.
7. ^ "Our Affiliated Unions | AFL-CIO". aflcio.org. Retrieved 2025-09-04.
8. ^ Palladino, Grace (1991). Dreams of Dignity, Workers of Vision. Washington, DC: International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
9. ^ "Hazards of the Electrical Occupation". Electrical Review and Western Electrician. 54 (3): 122.
10. ^ Metzgar, Jack (1 September 1988). ""Buying the Job" Target Programs & the Elgin Plan". Labor Research Review.
11. ^ Riley, William Bill (2013). "Why the IBEW Supports Expanding Nuclear Power Generation in the USA". Atoms for Peace. 3 (4) 58575: 308. doi:10.1504/AFP.2013.058575.
12. ^ National Joint Apprenticeship and Training committee for the Electrical Industry. Student Orientation Workbook. Upper Marlboro, MD: NJATC, 2005. Book. Page 193
13. ^ "38th International Convenetion - Brotherhood Beyond Borders". International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. n.d. Archived from the original on November 18, 2017. Retrieved November 17, 2017.

Further reading

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• Fink, Gary M., ed. Labor unions (Greenwood, 1977) pp. 83–85.

External links

[edit] Wikimedia Commons has media related to International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

• Official website
• IBEW Archived 2023-02-25 at the Wayback Machine

Archives

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• International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 77 (Seattle, Wash.) Records, 1905-2003. 14 cubic feet. At the Labor Archives of Washington State, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections.
• Henry Andes Papers. 2003 .03 cu. ft. (1 folder)
• International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Canada – Canadian Labour Unions – Web Archive created by the University of Toronto Libraries

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Affiliated unions	AAAA AGMA AGVA GIAA AEA AFGE AFM AFSA AFSCME AFT ALPA APWU ARA ATDA ATU AWIU BAC BCTGM BRS CSEA CWA AFA IUE NABET PPMW TNG Locals FLOC GMPIU IAFF IAM NFFE TCIU IATSE IBB IBEW IFPTE ILA Ironworkers IUANPW IUEC IUOE IUPA IUPAT LIUNA NPMHU MEBA PASS NALC NATCA NFLPA NNU NTWA NWSLPA OPCMIA OPEIU Printers & Engravers SAG-AFTRA SIU SEIU CIR NAGE NCFO Workers United SMART TWU UA UAW UFCW DWAW ICWUC RWDSU UMWA UNITE HERE USW UURWAW UWUA WGAE
State federations and central labor councils	California (Los Angeles, South Bay) Florida Indiana Maine Massachusetts New York (New York City) Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island Washington State (King) West Virginia
See also	American Federation of Labor Congress of Industrial Organizations Directly affiliated local union

v t e Canadian Labour Congress
Provincial andterritorial federations	Alberta British Columbia Manitoba New Brunswick Newfoundland and Labrador Northwest/Nunavut Nova Scotia Ontario Prince Edward Island Quebec Saskatchewan Yukon
National affiliates	ACPA ACTRA BCTF CAPE CFNU COPE CPAA CUPE CUPW DGC ETFO NUCAUT NUPGE OECTA OSSTF PIPSC PSAC
International affiliates	AFM ALPA ATU AWIU BAC BCTGM Boilermakers CWA Laborers IAFF IAM IATSE IBEW IFPTE ILA ILWU IPP Ironworkers IUOE IUPAT OPEIU SEIU WUCC SIU SMART UA UAW UFCW UMW UNITE HERE USW
Presidents	Claude Jodoin (1956–1966) Donald MacDonald (1967–1974) Joe Morris (1974–1978) Dennis McDermott (1978–1986) Shirley Carr (1986–1992) Bob White (1992–1999) Ken Georgetti (1999–2014) Hassan Yussuff (2014–2021) Bea Bruske (2021–present)
See also	Canadian Congress of Labour International Labor Communications Association One Big Union Trades and Labor Congress Union Retirees Workers' Unity League

Authority control databases
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