The several hundred UA Local 393 members who attended the contract ratification meeting at the Electricians Hall knew what was in front of them and were anxious to vote.

No other UA local, IBEW local, or Sheet Metal Worker local contract negotiations in 2015 in Northern California leveraged better money on the table: A $3.50 an hour raise per year for three straight years for a total of $10.50 an hour increase! On July 30, a near unanimous vote by the membership both ratified the new Master Labor Agreement contract, which expires June 30, 2018, and then voted the allocation of the first raise effective and retroactive to July 1, 2015.

Bill Guthrie, UA Local 393’s Business Manager, said there were five factors to that success.

First, our elected Negotiating Committee felt strongly about what we were doing and were clear the members had our back — a point our employers knew as well.

Second, the tech industry has created a regional construction boom. It’s a good time to be coming into negotiations.

Third, we continue to invest and train our members at the highest level possible to meet the needs of the modern construction and service industry.

Lastly, our Local continues our proud history of involvement and engagement with our community while building the political power necessary to negotiate union work.

“You remove any of these elements and we would not have seen this victory,” said Guthrie.

The Local’s elected Negotiating Committee and they put in dozens of hours to bring home the best agreement our Local has seen in years. This included taking part in a daylong Bargaining Team Training to prepare for negotiations, the first ever held by the Local.

• $1.50/hr. wage increase on the check!
• $1.50/hr. towards the Part A Defined Benefit Pension Plan (with an increase to an $0.11 an hour benefit).
• $.40/hr. towards our Health and Welfare Plan
• $.10/hr. additional to the Retiree Ad Hoc Fund (the retiree’s 13th check)

The additional 10 cents on the Retiree Ad Hoc Fund reinforces a program that saw 591 of our retired members — many living on very small, fixed incomes — receive $1,749 last December during the holiday season.

Additional contract improvements include an increase of foreman pay to 12.5% over journeyman scale; mandating that paychecks be delivered in envelopes for privacy; retroactive pay; and protections for rest period times.

But with good union contracts comes a collective responsibility. While we are growing, the rat contractors are growing too. Look no farther than the use of non-union workers from Sacramento on downtown San Jose’s One South Market project.

Guthrie explained, “We would be naïve to state we have complete control over our share of the market. I believe every member needs to know this. We need to up our fight against the race-to-the-bottom practices of our non-union competition. Our successes in negotiating future contracts and continuing to put members to work on good, family sustaining union jobs requires the engagement of all us — from the apprentice to the journeyman to the retiree — in order to beat back the non-union contractors that seek to strip the very food from our families mouths.”