IBEW 1253 Stands Strong & Wins $7.20/hr Wage Increases Over Three Years & New Defined Benefit Pension in Contract

IBEW 1253 Business Manager Nick Paquet & George Howe at the 2019 Common Ground Fair.
 

By mid May, IBEW 1253 electricians had been bargaining for nearly three months with the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA). But the companies and the union could not agree on an economic package. Pressure began building on the small central Maine local as other unions had already settled with NECA.

“We were very, very far apart and we were running out of time,” recalled IBEW 1253 Business Manager Nick Paquet.

If a majority of IBEW members in a local vote down a tentative agreement with NECA, the contract goes to arbitration. But Local 1253’s bargaining team was willing to go there if the NECA refused to budge because they knew they had the backing of the union’s rank and file members.

Throughout the month of May, Paquet made phone calls and visited Local 1253 members at worksites throughout the state to share information and gather feedback on the company’s offer. His members delivered him a message loud and clear that the contractors’ economic proposal and language changes were unacceptable and they were willing to fight back, even if it meant that they would have to wait until September to get a raise.

The union was scheduled to take a vote on the contract on Tuesday, May 25, but when the bargaining team met with NECA representatives at the Local 1253 hall in Newport on a Friday, four days before the union meeting, things were not looking up.

“I had to tell NECA that I couldn’t settle on a contract that the membership was not going to approve,” said Paquet. “Negotiations went right off the rails quickly and the contractors got up and left before noon. I even had food being delivered just before they were leaving.”

A final bargaining session was scheduled to take place over Zoom hours before the union’s vote the following Tuesday. But then on a ride back from Maine to Massachusetts NECA’s lead negotiator called Paquet and said she would prefer that the two sides meet in person. The tone at the next session had totally changed and the two parties worked out a deal that removed the stark language changes and raised wages by $7.20 over three years in $1.20 increments every six months. In addition, IBEW 1253 also won a new defined benefit pension through the National Electrical Benefit Fund, which takes effect January 1.

“I think the NEIB is groundbreaking, especially for a small local to start a defined benefit,” said Paquet.

In the end, all 65 members voting at the union meeting supported the contract. Paquet attributes the victory to strong communication and member engagement as well as the rest of the bargaining team.

“Talking to the members, getting out to the job sites and being honest with them through the process, I can say without exaggerating it was a real deal all the way through,” said Paquet. “In the end it helped reinforce our position because without the backing of our members we may have wanted to settle on a lesser agreement. But I knew I had their support and I knew where our threshold was.”

Meanwhile, business is humming along for IBEW 1253 and the local continues to accept large numbers apprentices, most recently adding 25 workers into its next first-year apprenticeship program.