One of the first missions I've bestowed on myself as a delegate is to organize my co-workers and my shop. Let me give you a little history.

The small independent communications company I work for has been around for about 20 years. The two owners where employed by Bell and then ATT for nearly 30 years before starting the business. They had always been CWA members with Bell and they immediately organized their new business with the CWA. During this entire time period the CWA and the IBEW were locked in a jurisdictional battle over data cabling and last year we (the employees) voted to leave the CWA and withdrew our memberships (including the bosses). We did this with the intention of joining the IBEW albeit reluctantly I must say, we (employees and the bosses) didn't want to be there and the IBEW didn't really want us there. Remember, the IBEW has done more damage to our business and to our ability to earn a living than any other source of conflict I could possibly name you, we were purely looking at it as a if you can't beat 'em join 'em deal.

One thing lead to another and at the end of the day we did not organize with the IBEW. Of the many stumbling blocks during negotiations one of the major issues was that the IBEW said the bosses could not be union members and could not do the work of union members, they said if there's enough work in the field for the bosses than they need to hire more union members to do it. We have a very small business (10-12 employees total, including office personnel) and the bosses work every bit as hard as the workers do on most days. We're not dealing with slave masters or clipboard guy type bosses here; it's not the evil capitalists vs. the struggling workers. These people have been communications technicians for more than 40 years and have established a fairly loyal clientele and crew and we all make a decent living working there. Yes they are the owners of the company, yes they hire and fire, and yes they profit off our labor. Now, they don't hire or fire very often and the word profit is relative in this particular situation. The fact is that we all have a roll and we (the workers) rely on them (the bosses) nearly as much as they rely on us and there's nobody getting rich off this little company.

I suppose my question is how is a small company like this handled in IWW organizing? Mind you, this isn't the only little communications company around either, when Bell spilt up years ago many of the employees struck out on their own and we know and work with several others in the local area. I'm still planning on organizing my shop but I'm willing to bet the bosses will want to be involved as well, and I know they'll remain valuable pieces of the crew as they have been. The employees aren't so much interested in organizing because our job sucks, fact is it doesn't really, we're interested in organizing for the sake of being a "union shop". St. Louis can be a tough town on non-union shops and sometimes it helps to be able to say you're union. Now even being organized in the IWW isn't going to save us from the IBEW but I'm prepared to lock horns with them again, I mean what the hell, I've been doing it for ten years and I'm getting pretty good at it. So, what do you suggest I do with my bosses?

Thanks in advance.

Dan