Data-Driven Strategies to Increase Market Share of Inside Electrical Contractors

ELECTRI Council Feedback Poll

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Study Data Visualizations

  1. IBEW Local Market Share Values 2004 - 2017.

  2. IBEW Locals Market Share Trends and Census Data.

  3. IBEW Locals Clustering and Market Share Trends.

Study Reports & Publications

  1. Presentation to the ELECTRI Council, Denver Colorado, 7/16/2019

Proposed Market Share Growth Strategies

  1. Establish regional portability agreements

  2. Provide incentives and support system for union small contractors

  3. Advocate for uniform electrician licensing across intra-state metropolitan areas

  4. Expand the use of CE/CWs

  5. Balance between local and regional market recovery agreement

  6. Merge local LMCC into regional LMCC

  7. Merge unions in large metropolitan areas

  8. Establish and support lobbying entities

  9. Counter globalization with Global Framework Agreements

  10. Implement proactive workforce recruitment and organizing initiatives

  11. Increase organizing effort in the immigrant population

 

Study Main Data Collection Findings:

  1. Public projects can help maintain a stable positive market share. IBEW local unions with positive market share trends had 34% of their man-hours from publicly-funded project, versus 24% for the local unions with negative market share trends.

  2. Availability of industrial construction work is critical for positive market share trend. Growing and resilient local unions had around 50% of their hours from industrial projects, compared to around 30% in shrinking local unions.

  3. Growing local unions showed slightly larger Tech Installer programs, if the low-voltage work can be sustained in local market. Growing local unions had around 10% of their working members in the Tech Installer program, compared to 7% for the shrinking local unions.

  4. With the same worker organizing effort, growing local unions organized less but larger signatory electrical contractors. The worker organizing levels were similar in the growing and shrinking local unions, resulting in around 700 union members for every 1 million population. However, growing local unions had less but larger signatory contractors with around 40 IBEW members per a contractor, compared to only 15 IBEW members per a contractor in shrinking local unions. 

  5. More than half of surveyed local unions reported no PLAs or no impact of PLAs on their market share. Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) were not applicable for around 60% of the surveyed local unions, for both publically-funded and privately-funded projects.     

  6. Shrinking local unions showed high dependency on PLAs. PLAs were almost inexistent in the interviewed growing local unions, while shrinking unions reported around 5 PLAs in their jurisdictions. 

  7. National presidential maintenance agreements had no impact on growing or shrinking local unions. 60% of the survey local unions had no involvement in national maintenance agreements. Even if they exist, these agreements don't result in significant union man-hours.

  8. Growing local unions benefited from relaxed crew ratios. 85% of the survey growing local unions said relaxed crew rations supported their market shares, compared to 69% of shrinking local unions. The collective bargaining agreements in growing local unions allow for around 1.5 lower-classification worker for each 1 journeyman. This ratio drops to around 0.8 in shrinking local unions.

  9. CE/CW worker classification was instrumental for local unions to grow their market share. The CE/CWs represented 25% of the working IBEW members in growing local unions, compared to 3% in shrinking locals.   

  10. Portability was perceived to have a positive impact on market share. 80% of the growing local unions have had varying degrees of open portability, compared to 55% of shrinking local unions. Almost all of the open portability cases were part of regional market recovery agreements. 

  11. Market recovery agreements (MRAs) are more common in shrinking local unions, but their limited scopes do not help in recovering the market. 80% of the interviewed shrinking local unions had either a local or regional MRAs, compared to 45% of growing locals. Most of MRAs cover only small non-industrial projects, like gas stations, strip malls, retail, and residential.

 

ELECTRI International

This research was supported by the generous funding of ELECTRI International, the research foundation of the electrical construction industry.