The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) is a labor union that represents approximately 887,000 workers and retirees in the electrical industry in the United States, Canada, Guam, Panama, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands;

The IBEW began with the Electrical Wiremen and Linemen's Union No. 5221, founded in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1890. 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.

thumb|left|IBEW members holding cutouts of the union's logo at a rally

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.

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.

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. In 1988, 30 percent of American construction work was unionized while the IBEW had 40 percent of electrical-related construction. Membership as of 2026 stands at about 887,000, according to their official website.

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

Leadership

International presidents

thumb|right| IBEW obligation at Local 405 hall in [[Cedar Rapids, Iowa ]]

International secretary-treasurers

See also

  • IBEW Building
  • Henry Miller Museum

References

  • International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 166 Records, 1909-1980. M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University at Albany, State University of New York (hereafter referred to as the IBEW Local 166 Records).

Further reading

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

Archives

  • International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 77 (Seattle, Wash.) Records, 1905-2003. At the Labor Archives of Washington, 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