The Current Situation in a North Texas Trade Union

At midnight on December 1, 2025, the collective bargaining agreement between the North Texas Chapter of the National Electrical Contractors’ Association (NECA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local Union 20 expired. Negotiations for a new agreement have been ongoing since the summer, and on November 11, a gathering of around 500 rank-and-file union members met in the Union Hall to hear the contractors’ final offer. In a breathtaking show of solidarity, the members’ rejection of the bosses’ “offers” was nearly unanimous! The demands and concessions that these two parties are at loggerheads over are typical of most union fights: the workers demand higher wages and benefits, while the contractors demand rapacious cuts and diminished working conditions.

Local 20 of the IBEW has over 4,000 dues-paying members toiling in one of the hottest (literally and metaphorically) labor markets in the country, so you may be wondering why you haven’t heard any mention of a massive strike brewing down south in the last three weeks. The answer is simple: these union members are prohibited from striking! What’s more material to the situation these workers find themselves in is not so much their demands going unmet as the fact that it is now completely out of their control how this struggle will be resolved.

Certain parts of Local 20’s Collective Bargaining Agreement with NECA are essentially non-negotiable. Year to year, contract to contract, whether we like it or not, even if we have the votes and petition signatures, some clauses are written in stone. The International Office, which oversees the myriad Locals across the US and Canada, refers to these clauses as Category One Language. According to Price Warwick III, Business Manager and Financial Secretary for the Local, “Category 1 language is negotiated between IBEW and NECA at the top level.” What this means is union officials in Washington DC and the representatives of construction capital are rubbing elbows to determine the working conditions of people who neither live nor work anywhere near them.

One such example of Category 1 language is the no-strike clause, which states that, “During the term of this Agreement, there shall be no stoppage of work either by strike or lockout because of any proposed changes in this Agreement or dispute over matters relating to this Agreement.” In the case of Local 20, the term expired on December 1, so many are wondering why this local is still bound to labor on. The very first section of Article I says that, in the event of contract expiration, “It shall continue in effect from year to year thereafter, from December 1 through November 30 of each year.” If no new agreement is reached between the parties, the contract simply remains in effect, because now the “term of this Agreement” is effectively indefinite.

So what recourse do union members have when NECA decides to stonewall, as they’ve done in past and current negotiations? Accusing them of bargaining in bad faith won’t get us anywhere, given the toothlessness of the National Labor Relations Board and US labor law in general. Well, luckily for the workers, someone in Washington DC has decided that for us, too! “Should the Labor-Management Committee fail to agree or to adjust any matter, such shall then be referred to the Council on Industrial Relations for the Electrical Contracting Industry for Adjudication. The Council’s decision shall be final and binding.” The CIR’s website states explicitly that the purpose of its existence is “replacing the need for costly strikes.” Careful readers will doubtless ask, costly for whom? We see right away which side of the class struggle that the council leans toward from the beginning.

The Council is made up of 12 regular members or their alternates, 6 from IBEW and 6 from NECA. In mid-February, they will listen to the parties who are at odds, and then they will reach a unanimous decision, and we will acquiesce. This is the second consecutive time electrical workers in North Texas have been forced into this position. The Council, however, claims it “was never intended to be a substitute for the development of good faith labor-management relations on the local level.” Read...This is the one thing we didn’t want to happen.

I asked Price Warwick III what options were left for us to shift this undemocratic language toward the favor of working men and women. He directed me to an Article in the IBEW Constitution that requires no fewer than 15 locals from 15 different states to concurrently propose a referendum. He then cautioned that, because NECA and the International Office of IBEW work together on this language, it may still be fruitless. “Ultimately, we can propose a change, and even urge the International to act on it, but we can’t force NECA to agree to it.”

Given this sour state of affairs, class conscious workers must return to the teachings of Lenin when deciding how best to proceed. The following is applicable to communist work in unions at large, not just my own Local.

In Lenin’s “Theses on the Organizational Structure of the Communist Parties and the Methods and Content of Their Work,” presented at the 3rd Congress of the Communist International (1921), he admits that, “In trade-union activity, the Communist cells and fractions have often been at a loss in the face of the simplest daily issues. It is easy to preach only the general principles of communism, and then – faced with a specific challenge – to fall back into the negative approach of vulgar trade unionism...merely playing into the hands of the yellow leaders.” If we want to move beyond our current situation, we have to move beyond purely trade-unionist activities.

He goes on to advise that we should instead determine our revolutionary position based on the actual content of each question that comes up. “Rather than resting content with principled opposition to all wage contracts, Communists should contest the actual factual content of the contracts proposed...Every move to rein in the Proletariat’s readiness to struggle should be condemned...The capitalists try to use every wage agreement to tie the hands of the workers in struggle. Communists must certainly explain this to workers.” Take Category 1 language, for example. For Local 20, and for the broader IBEW, we must highlight the Category 1 language in every contract, demonstrate its negative consequences for the workers’ struggle, and agitate on that basis.

Further, Local 20’s matter is being decided by yellow union officials and capitalists in DC, but Lenin tells us the lower-level union bureaucracy should not be exempt from criticism. “Although their intentions are often good, they hide their weakness behind union bylaws and decisions and instructions of the union top leadership. Communists should not hesitate to act resolutely, always demanding that the lower-level bureaucrats explain clearly what they are doing to remove these supposed obstacles, and whether they are prepared to join with the membership in the struggle for this goal.” It’s not enough just to call out the top-level IBEW leadership, we must confront the yellow leaders in our local unions as well.

These are the first steps as far as agitation, education, and organization. Communists and class conscious workers have a responsibility to struggle for emancipation by separating our misleaders from their supporters and convincing workers that the only way forward is to fight to take what we want and need for ourselves away from those who would exploit us.