Tuesday, DECEMBER 16TH, 6:30 AM @ the NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center (16021 NE Airport Way, Portland OR)
Sign and circulate the petition here: https://form.jotform.com/253424995199170
A SISTER APPRENTICE IS BEING BLACKLISTED
Shelby, a union apprentice and member in good standing of IBEW Local 48, has been systematically denied work assignments through the training center. After enduring workplace harassment and requesting legally-mandated accommodations for her disability, she has been blacklisted—economically expelled from the trade she has trained for and the union that is supposed to protect her.
Blacklisting is an economic death sentence. It is the weaponization of the dispatch system to silence workers who speak up, to punish those who assert their rights, and to push out anyone the bosses—or their collaborators in union bureaucracy—deem “difficult.” If one apprentice can be blacklisted for requesting accommodations and reporting retaliation, then no member’s livelihood is secure.
THE FUNDAMENTAL CONTRADICTION
The NECA-IBEW Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee operates under a fundamental contradiction: NECA represents the bosses, yet holds power over workers’ access to training and employment within the union.
The National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) is not a workers’ organization. NECA is a trade association of electrical contracting companies—the employers. Their stated mission is to advance “the management interests” of contractors. They negotiate with the IBEW not as equals, but as the employing class securing “labor peace” and a steady supply of trained workers to exploit.
Yet this same organization, representing boss interests, sits on the Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee (JATC) that controls who gets into apprenticeships, who advances, and who is kicked out. The result is predictable: apprentices who assert their rights, who demand accommodations, who refuse to tolerate harassment, become targets for expulsion from the program.
This is class collaboration in its most naked form. By allowing the bosses to refuse workers being hired off the list, the union has ceded control over one of its most vital functions — guaranteeing fair access to work for every dues paying electrical worker. The result? Sisters like Shelby are disappeared from the out of work list when they become “inconvenient” to management. Journeyworkers get stuck on unemployment, and apprentices become “unemployable” and are removed from the apprenticeship program.
From a class unionist perspective, this arrangement is a betrayal of the union’s fundamental purpose. Unions exist to defend workers against the bosses, not to partner with them in disciplining workers. The bosses’ interests and workers’ interests are irreconcilably opposed. There can be no “mutual benefit” when one class lives by exploiting the other.
BLACKLISTING: A WEAPON AGAINST THE WORKING CLASS
Blacklisting has a long, ugly history in the labor movement as a weapon wielded AGAINST workers. Historically, employers used blacklists to bar union organizers, militants, and “troublemakers” from employment across entire industries. Workers who went on strike, who spoke out, who organized, found themselves unemployable—their names circulated among bosses who closed ranks against them.
It is a profound corruption when unions themselves engage in this practice. When a union blacklists a member, it abandons its most basic function: defending the right of every worker to earn a living. It takes the bosses’ side in the class struggle. It becomes an agent of economic coercion rather than a shield against it.
The IBEW has no legitimate purpose in denying work to members in good standing. When harassment is reported, when accommodations are requested, the proper response is to defend the member and hold the harassers accountable—not to quietly remove the “problem” worker from dispatch lists. This is not union solidarity; this is management’s wet dream, delivered by union officials who have forgotten which side they’re on.
DISCRIMINATION IS ENDEMIC
The construction trades remain among the most hostile workplaces for women and people with disabilities. The facts are stark:
Women in Construction:
- Women constitute only 11% of construction workers overall and just 4% of trades positions
- Research consistently documents that women, particularly women of color, face systematic discrimination in hiring, training assignments, and retention
- Studies show that 26.5% of women in trades report being “always or frequently” harassed due to their gender
- 47.7% report being treated differently than male coworkers and working in unsupportive environments
- Apprenticeship cancellation rates for women reach 70% in some trades like carpentry, driven out by hostile conditions rather than inability to do the work
- The EEOC has documented “pervasive” harassment on construction sites and notes that discrimination “takes virulent forms”
Workers with Disabilities:
- Despite federal EEO regulations requiring accommodation and prohibiting discrimination, apprenticeship programs routinely fail to meet even basic inclusion benchmarks
- The national aspirational goal is 7% representation of qualified workers with disabilities in apprenticeship programs—a goal consistently missed across the industry
- Workers with disabilities who request legally-mandated reasonable accommodations face retaliation, including denial of work assignments and exclusion from training opportunities
- The Americans with Disabilities Act requirements are routinely ignored in construction, with workers forced to choose between requesting accommodation and keeping their jobs
The IBEW’s own history reveals this pattern. Black electricians who fought discrimination in locals like Seattle’s IBEW Local 46 “were often blacklisted by electrical contractors and found themselves working in maintenance for government agencies or traveling to other locals in search of work” because of their organizing. This is the legacy we are living today when Shelby is denied work for speaking up.
OUR DEMANDS
We demand that IBEW Local 48 and the NECA-IBEW JATC immediately:
- END THE BLACKLISTING – Restore Shelby to full access to work assignments through the hiring hall without discrimination or retaliation
- REINSTATE TO APPRENTICESHIP – Ensure Shelby’s full reinstatement to the apprenticeship program with all rights, training opportunities, and advancement that she is entitled to as a member in good standing
- IMPLEMENT ACCOMMODATIONS – Provide the legally-mandated reasonable accommodations for Shelby’s disability immediately, as required under the ADA and apprenticeship EEO regulations
- REMOVE NECA VETO POWER – End management’s power over worker access to training and employment. The union must control dispatch and apprenticeship without boss interference
- ESTABLISH MEMBER OVERSIGHT – Create a rank-and-file committee, elected by and accountable to the membership, to monitor all dispatch decisions and investigate complaints of discrimination or retaliation
- ZERO TOLERANCE FOR RETALIATION – Implement and enforce a clear policy that any employer, contractor, or union official who retaliates against workers for reporting harassment or requesting accommodations will be barred from hiring hall access
SIGN THE PETITION – CIRCULATE WIDELY
A petition demanding Shelby’s reinstatement and an end to discriminatory practices is circulating. Sign it. Share it. Make it impossible to ignore.
Petitions alone will not win this fight—only collective action and worker solidarity can do that—but they demonstrate that Shelby is not alone, that members are watching, and that this injustice will not be tolerated in silence.
Sign the petition here: https://form.jotform.com/253424995199170
THE CLASS QUESTION: WHOSE UNION IS THIS?
This situation exposes the fundamental question facing all unions: Do we exist to defend workers, or to manage workers for the bosses?
Class collaborationist union leadership sees its role as brokering “labor peace,” smoothing over conflicts, maintaining “good relationships” with management. When workers become “difficult” by asserting their rights, this kind of leadership sees them as threats to the cozy arrangement with the bosses.
Class struggle unionism starts from a different premise: Workers and bosses have no interests in common. The bosses profit by paying us as little as possible and extracting as much work as they can. As the working class, we must resist that exploitation collectively, to fight for every worker’s right to work with dignity and safety, and to build the power to challenge management’s control over our lives.
From this perspective, Shelby’s fight is everyone’s fight. When one member is denied work for speaking up, the message is clear: shut up and take it, or you’re next. That message must be rejected. The union must defend the member, or it is not a union—it is a company tool with union branding.
The fact that NECA—the bosses’ organization—has a seat at the table controlling apprenticeship and training is itself a betrayal of class independence. The bosses should have no say in what goes on in worker’s unions! Those decisions must be made by workers, for workers, in workers’ interests.
REBUILD CLASS SOLIDARITY
Shelby’s blacklisting is a symptom of a deeper sickness: the subordination of union structures to boss control and the abandonment of class struggle principles.
We cannot rely on union bureaucrats who see their role as maintaining relationships with NECA contractors. We cannot trust a JATC where bosses have veto power. We must organize ourselves at the workplace level, build solidarity across job sites, and create rank-and-file structures that can hold both the bosses AND the union leadership accountable.
Class solidarity means defending every worker, not just those who look like us or who are “easy” to defend. The bosses have always used divisions—by race, gender, disability, immigration status—to keep workers fighting each other instead of fighting them.
When women are harassed out of the trades, it weakens all of us. When workers with disabilities are denied accommodations, it weakens all of us. When any member can be disappeared for speaking up, none of us are safe.
The exclusionary unionism of the past, where skilled trades were reserved for white men and organized to keep out everyone else, served the bosses perfectly. It created a divided workforce where some workers saw themselves in competition with others rather than in common struggle against exploitation.
We must break with that legacy. Defending Shelby is not “identity politics” or a distraction from “real” union issues—it IS union business. The union’s job is to defend the livelihood of every member. When it fails to do that, when it sacrifices vulnerable members to maintain good relations with the bosses, it has failed at its most basic task.
An injury to one is an injury to all. Shelby’s fight is our fight.
JOIN US DECEMBER 16TH
Tuesday, December 16th, 6:30 AM
NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center
16021 NE Airport Way, Portland, OR
Bring banners. Bring signs. Bring your union siblings. Make noise.
Let the training center, the contractors, and the union officials know: We will not accept the blacklisting of fellow union members. We will not tolerate discrimination and retaliation. We demand Shelby’s reinstatement NOW.
This is not a request. This is a demand backed by the collective power of workers who refuse to be divided, who refuse to abandon their siblings, and who refuse to let the bosses—or their collaborators in union leadership—destroy a worker’s livelihood for asserting her rights.
When we stand together, we have power. When we defend each other, we are unbreakable.
SOLIDARITY WITH SHELBY
END BLACKLISTING NOW
REINSTATE AND ACCOMMODATE
WORKERS’ POWER, NOT BOSS POWER
For more information on class struggle unionism and building worker power: https://class-struggle-action.net/?page_id=1751
Action organized by rank-and-file members of IBEW Local 48 and the Class Struggle Action Network in solidarity with Sister Shelby
