COLUMBUS — The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers is bringing organizers from across its six-state Fourth District to Columbus this month for a "job blitz," canvassing active construction sites to recruit non-union electricians with offers of same-day placement with union contractors.
A flyer currently being used by the IBEW to promote the “job blitz” in Ohio
Non-union, or "merit shop," workers vastly outnumber union members in construction nationally — nearly 89% of the roughly 9 million U.S. construction workers were non-union in 2025, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, giving unions a large pool of potential recruits to target.
Merit shop advocates point out that their wages and benefits have largely kept pace with union contracts in recent years, while workers remain directly employed by their company rather than paying union dues and a percentage of gross wages to a third-party hall.
The plan, first described publicly by Dorsey Hager of the Columbus/Central Ohio Building & Construction Trades Council, comes as the union struggles to keep up with demand. Central Ohio building-trades hours have surged from about 4 million a year a decade ago to more than 18 million in 2025, driven largely by data center construction.
When local union halls can't fill job calls fast enough, they typically turn to "travelers" — members from other locals brought in from out of state to cover the gap — making local non-union electricians an increasingly attractive recruiting target instead.
A similar blitz in Dallas-Fort Worth this spring drew roughly 500 applicants and led to nearly 100 hires in a single night. Ohio's plumbers and pipefitters union and the Ohio State Building Trades are watching the Columbus effort before deciding whether to run their own. No dates or specific sites have been publicly announced.