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IBEW drops attempt to represent MEA's student trainees

PALMER -- The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local
1547 has abandoned attempts to represent juniors and seniors in high
school who work as student trainees at Matanuska Electric Association.

MEA recently received notice from the National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) that the IBEW has withdrawn its petition to represent four of
MEA's student trainees, all juniors or seniors in high school.

"We have operated our student trainee program for several years as a
public service, and were quite surprised by the union�s attempt to
organize our high school students," said Bruce D. Scott, MEA director of
member and public relations. "We are pleased that the IBEW has abandoned
these efforts. Unfortunately, the union's organizing attempt cost MEA's
members approximately $27,000 in attorney's fees."

"We are hopeful the union will also withdraw the grievance it filed over
student trainees performing work at MEA," Scott said. MEA considers the
grievance to be without merit, but the IBEW has requested that the issue
go to arbitration, he said.

The grievance claims that MEA's employment of student trainees violates
a collective bargaining agreement. As a remedy for the grievance, the
union demands that engineering, operations and accounting union members
at MEA be paid the wages they allegedly have "lost" because the work was
performed instead by student trainees.

In a separate action in November, the NLRB dismissed an attempt by the
IBEW to force three high school students working at MEA to join the
union. The IBEW sought to require the student trainees to join the IBEW
in a "unit clarification" case it filed with the labor board. The IBEW
argued that the students were performing "bargaining unit work" 
and should be included in the engineering, operations and accounting
bargaining unit at MEA.

As IBEW members, the students would have been required to pay the union
$10 per month and 2 percent of their gross weekly pay.

-- 
"A friend may well be reckoned
the masterpiece of Nature."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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