PERRYSBURG — New apprentice electricians with International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union Local 8 were among the members of a picketing line on Friday.

“We’re out here today because we have a contractor here that doesn’t have a contract with a local union. So we are picketing this area to try to inform these guys and raise awareness about joining a union and the benefits of being union, from the benefits, to the pay, to the health care, to the pension plan, which most of these guys don’t have,” Local 8 Union Organizer Dustin Huff said.

About two dozen members of the IBEW were on the site with a large blow-up figure of a cartoon pig crushing a worker in its hand. In that group is a class of 15 apprentice electricians.

They are picketing against Zender Electric, Fostoria, which is doing the electrical installation for the new Valvoline facility in the French Quarter Square on the Fremont Pike. The picketing started on Thursday.

This isn’t the first picketing the IBEW has done in that area.

“We picked across the street. There was a pet store that we did before, but against a different contractor,” Huff said.

This picketing serves a dual purpose, Huff said. It is informing the public, and they are also training the new apprentices in union organizing methods and on how to properly picket.

“It teaches these apprentices about picketing and reaching out to the non-union. It’s our goal to organize this contractor, but it also teaches (the apprentices) to help us to reach out to the community, and other electricians, and be approachable, and explain the benefits of what we have,” Huff said. “If me and my organizing partner try to do that, it’s about a 1,000 to one ratio. If we train every one of our members to act as an organizer it comes down to about two and half to one ratio.”

The apprentices typically learn the details of picketing in class, from their instructors and a book, as a standard part of their licensing education. This section of their education had been scheduled for months, but when the organizers got word out within the union it was changed to take advantage of the opportunity for a practical hands-on experience in real life.

“I have to say that today’s youth, that work for the non-union contractors, they are aware. They say ‘Hey, I’m not getting a pension. Tell me about your pension,’ or ‘I’m not getting health care.’ I’m surprised how educated they are. They ask really awesome questions,” Huff said.

Andrew Enright, IBEW Local 8 apprentice, was picketing on Friday. Both his father and his uncle are electricians with IBEW Local 8.

“Just seeing how much (my father) was able to provide for my family, you know having a good paying job, with good benefits, it’s been able to take care of me, and I come from a family of six,” Enright said. “I just knew it was a good career choice. It was able to take care of me and I’ve got plenty of brothers who take care of me.”

He graduated from St. Francis De Sales School in Toledo, lives in Oregon and is happy to be working out of Local 8 in Rossford. He is working for Romanoff electric on the Rossford schools multi-sport complex.

“With a good union backing, and a strong working class in this area, we all deserve a fair share in building this community and being a part of this community. We’re all owed a good living in return, and it’s something we earn every single day,” Enright said. “We’re out here fighting the good fight every day and trying to spread the word.”

Huff said that he’s seeing more and more non-union construction. He said that when they do a picket line it can be for trying to maintain prevailing wages for the area, but other times it’s like this one, “informational, on the total package.”

Zender Electric owner Buddy Zender confirmed that his company is the electrical contractor working on the Valvoline facility on Fremont Pike and that his company is not currently a union company, adding that the union has the right to picket the project. He refrained from further comment.