[rad-green] More Than 1,200 IBEW Members Call on Union Leadership to Retract Biden Endorsement

*https://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/22315/ibew-labor-bernie-sanders-joe-biden-endorsement
<https://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/22315/ibew-labor-bernie-sanders-joe-biden-endorsement>IN
THESE TIMES           FEB 18, 2020*

*More Than 1,200 IBEW Members Call on Union Leadership to Retract Biden
Endorsement*
BY HAMILTON NOLAN <https://inthesetimes.com/community/profile/323348>

*Former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers Construction and Maintenance conference on April 05,
2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)  *

On February 5, the 775,000-member International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers  announced
<http://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/20Daily/2002/200205_IBEW-Endorses-Joe-Biden-for-President>
that
it was endorsing Joe Biden for president. It was Biden’s biggest union
endorsement campaign so far in his presidential campaign. This week, nearly
1,300 IBEW members who support Bernie Sanders sent a letter to union
membership asking them to retract that decision.

The letter, from “IBEW Members For Bernie,” blasts the union’s leadership
for endorsing Biden without a vote of members. “The leadership of the union
had previously provided reassurance to the membership that they would trust
the judgement of rank-and-file leaders and members to  represent their own
interest in the 2020 presidential primary, and we are disappointed that the
International has instead thrown their weight behind the Biden campaign
without member consultation,” it reads. The letter says that those who sign
it support Sanders’ “transformative vision for expanding the labor
movement, as well as the democracy and the solidarity that his campaign
embodies.” It concludes, “We are calling on the International Officers to
immediately retract their endorsement and call for the rank-and-file to
participate in a democratic endorsement process by participating in an in
person vote at their March local union meeting.”

It is signed by more than 1,200 IBEW members from across the country,
including dozens who identify themselves as officers or members of the
executive boards of their locals. Signatures were still being added as of
Monday night.

The existence of the letter is a result of the work of Sanders supporters
within the IBEW, who began circulating it online and within local chapters
shortly after the endorsement was announced. Mark Gardner, an engineer in
Manchester, Connecticut and member of IBEW Local 457 who helped to organize
the letter, said that it came in response to not just a disagreement over
candidates, but also over the union’s undemocratic process. “I have been
frustrated with the trend of union leadership’s endorsing the establishment
candidates while rank and file votes generally go for Senator Sanders,”
Gardner said. “We do not want IBEW leadership to switch their endorsement
to Bernie, but to open the choice up to the rank-and-file and hold a vote
during the local unions’ March meeting.”

Another Sanders supporter, Joe Ellerbroek, a member of IBEW Local 347 in
Des Moines, Iowa, echoed those sentiments. “I was outraged when I
learned what the international had done. I felt there was too much at stake
to just ignore it and hope for the best, especially when we have this rare
opportunity to transform the whole dynamic of the labor struggle. Turns out
I wasn’t the only one,” he said.

For Biden, whose campaign is flagging after disappointing finishes in Iowa
and New Hampshire, union endorsements are a key firewall against charges
that the platform of “Middle Class Joe” is not the most attractive for the
working class. Biden has been endorsed
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/joe-biden-snags-endorsement-from-electrical-workers-union/2020/02/04/2f4a8f22-47a6-11ea-ab15-b5df3261b710_story.html>
by
the firefighters union, the Iron Workers, and the Amalgamated Transit
Union, but the 775,00-member IBEW is his biggest prize. The union did not
endorse a candidate this early in the past two Democratic primaries. “It’s
not typical for the IBEW to endorse this early in the primary process,” the
union said in its endorsement
<http://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/20Daily/2002/200205_IBEW-Endorses-Joe-Biden-for-President>,
“but this year there’s an urgency we haven’t seen in a very long time.
Energy policies made today will reverberate for decades, and it’s paramount
that we have a candidate for president who supports IBEW jobs and IBEW
values.” The IBEW has been publicly skeptical
<https://www.vox.com/2019/5/22/18628299/green-new-deal-labor-union-2020-democrats>
of
the Green New Deal, the ambitious climate change plan that Sanders, but not
Biden <https://apnews.com/9adf7f55aca24321b836aff887ba5cbc>, has backed.

Neither the IBEW nor the Biden campaign responded to a request for comment
on the letter.

In organized labor, as in society at large, the 2020 Democratic primary is
exposing the deep, latent divide between the left and the establishment.
The IBEW is not even the first union in the past week to experience an
intra-union uproar pitting progressives against moderates—members of Unite
Here who back Bernie Sanders circulated
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeW1fhTsi39gxB58R2c9_sxntSGJdChLaB6SnFNvvFplR7qWQ/viewform>
a
similar internal letter for signatures last week after the Culinary Workers
union in Las Vegas warned
<https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/in-new-flyer-culinary-union-warns-members-sanders-would-end-their-health-care-if-elected-president>
its
members in ominous terms that Bernie Sanders wanted to “end” their health
care plan. Already, both national and local
<https://twitter.com/ddayen/status/1229514663689240576> unions are choosing
sides in what amounts to a proxy war for the soul of the Democratic party.
The ability of factions like the IBEW Members for Bernie to successfully
exercise power against much more conservative union leadership will
determine the posture of the entire labor movement long after the 2020
election is over.

Read the full letter here
<https://inthesetimes.com/uploads/IBEW_Members_for_Bernie_Letter_to_IBEW_Leadership.pdf>
.

<https://inthesetimes.com/community/profile/323348/>

Hamilton Nolan is a labor reporting fellow at In These Times. He has spent
the past decade writing about labor and politics for Gawker, Splinter, The
Guardian, and elsewhere. You can reach him at [email protected].

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