Tallahassee City Workers Pursue IBEW Representation
October 3, 2005
More than 400 municipal workers in Tallahassee, Florida will have to wait for an election since the Tallahassee City Commission rebuffed union requests for card-check representation. The governing five-member city commission voted against card check 3-2. Mayor John Marks, a Democrat, cast the deciding vote against a joint IBEW/service employees union attempt to organize municipal workers.
Until that vote, it appeared the city would recognize hundreds of signed authorization cards and accept the union as the workers’ bargaining agent. Instead, despite telephone calls from such prominent politicians as Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Marks broke a tie to defeat card check. Now the workers are preparing for a representation campaign in which the mayor promised no interference from management. IBEW Local 1205 Business Manager Jeff Henderson said the commission will consider a formal neutrality agreement at a meeting soon.
A strong majority of public employees providing city services have indicated their interest in joining a union in the joint campaign by the IBEW and the Service Employees International Union. Parks and recreation, custodians, painters, mechanics and carpenters would join the SEIU. Electricians at the city’s two power plants, bus drivers, wastewater plant operators, technicians and others would be IBEW members.
Uneven enforcement of rules and favoritism have generated low morale in the ranks of workers, particularly the transportation employees, said bus driver Phyllis Andrews. “It’s a good place to work but certain people get away with things and certain people don’t. It’s favoritism,” Andrews said.
