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April 29, 2008
TO: All Minnesota Bargaining Units, Stewards, MVOC Members,
IBEW Local Union 949
FROM: Vince Guertin, Business Manager
RE: Call to Action
Dear Brothers and Sisters:
The construction industry is experiencing unprecedented unemployment across the state of Minnesota. IBEW members have not seen
sustained unemployment like this in many years. Unemployment runs as high as twenty-five percent (25%) in some Locals. As individuals, there is something that each of us can do to
create employment opportunities.
The IBEW Minnesota State Council is asking all IBEW Local Unions; Utility, Manufacturing and Construction, to act in unison by
contacting our membership and asking for immediate action on behalf of the Mall of America Phase II expansion project.
This single construction project will create approximately 7,000 construction jobs, 700 of them IBEW jobs. Ultimately, MOA Phase II
would create 7,000 permanent jobs. Last year, before the Governor’s veto, the Building Trades staged an outdoor rally at the State Capitol in support of Phase II, and announced that the
Mall of America had signed a Project Labor Agreement to use 100 percent (100%) union labor on the job – the largest PLA in the state’s history. That PLA is still intact.
I am asking each of our Minnesota bargaining units to copy and distribute this letter to as many of our members as possible.
Encourage our members to contact their state legislators and let them know that the IBEW is in support of the Mall of America Phase II project and the union jobs it will create. Writing
letters is the best approach, but calling and e-mailing works, too.
If you don’t know who your representatives are, log onto
www.leg.state.mn.us/.
Contacting our elected officials is one way that we can reach out to help our unemployed brothers and sisters, many of them unemployed
for over a year. There is great strength in numbers. Contacting our legislators does make a difference.
Please help.
In solidarity,
VINCENT R. GUERTIN
Business Manager
VRG/eat
OPEIU 12, AFL-CIO
Cc: Executive Board
Business Representatives
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