Employees seeking to improve their working lives through union organization can be successful with a structured, thorough approach to building collective action. Through experience, the IBEW has identified five basic steps which insure successful organizing. The IBEW will assist employees in successfully  achieving their goals, and has the experience to help employees build a vibrant, effective, and winning employee organization.

1.  Locate

A.  Identify and establish Organizing Committee (OC) members in each work location,  on each worksite, and on every shift.

B. Develop lists of employees, supervisors, and managers in each work location.

C. Map out floor plans in each work location site to determine our ability to cover each worksite.

2. Educate

A. Organizing Committee members must be trained to have enough knowledge about the Union to:

1. Educate other employees

2. Counter the employer's anti-campaign

3. Address concerns of employees about organizing.

B.  Develop appropriate campaign materials to address specific needs/issues of the campaign.

C.  Learn about every issue employees have, and involve employees in developing the solution.

3. Inoculate

A.  Employees must have enough training and knowledge to prevent the employer from thwarting their effort through misinformation and coercion.

B.  Let employees know what the employer will do in an anti-campaign - - before the employer does it!

C.  Eliminate employee fears by building credibility in the Union - through the OC.

D.  Counter the employer's anti-campaign by factual, pertinent information at the necessary time.

4. Communicate/Activate

A.  Form and develop an employee network, linking each department, jobsite, division to the others for rapid communication.

B.  Set up rumor control and response network to counter employer's anti tactic of starting negative rumors.

C.  Improve credibility of the Union as the employee voice by providing information to the employees first before the Company.

D.  Implement activities to build employee involvement and support in the Union.

5. Agitate

A.  Employees must continually challenge other employees to achieve the goals set by the employees as a group.

B.  The challenge of agitation is to make it understood to the employer that the employees will be successful in achieving their goals through their collective strength.

C.  Agitation insures that employees will have a much easier time demonstrating power and credibility of their effort to the employer by their demonstrated collective strength.

How do we accomplish this?

1. Locate

A.  Assign OC members to develop employee network lists by department and work location.

B.  Identify negative employees and those employees "on the fence".

C.  Keep listings current by advising organizing office of changes in the work location of any employee.

D.  Identify possible OC members in locations where we don't have one now.

2. Educate

A.  Identify/correct weaknesses in current information.

B.  Identify OC members willing to team up for housecalls to employees when the time comes.

C.  Set specific tasks for the number of employees to contact, and when to contact, so not to overload OC members.

D.  Develop responses to anti-campaign issues and coordinate with the communications network for response.

3. Inoculate

A.  Educate other employees as to employer anti-tactics. Be able to quantify our results.

B.  Educate OC members in how to counter union buster tactics at captive audience meetings.

4. Communicate/Activate

A.  Develop and quantify employee communications network.

B.  Constantly test our ability to communicate on a broad scale.

C.  Constantly expand network - Goal is to reach every employee in the Company.

D.  Develop and implement tasks - small at first - for employees to participate in, and involve as many employees as possible.

5. Agitate

A.  Whenever the employer makes false claims, challenge the employer to prove their statements.

B.  Demonstrate increasingly overt collective support by group actions (buttons, t-shirt days, etc,)

C.  Elicit community support for the employees' organizing effort.

D.  Demonstrate support and strength to other employees by inviting them to join the movement, and more importantly, give them something to do to assist the movement.

IBEW Organizing Committee Training