About Local 1
First charter.
Full responsibility.
Every IBEW local in North America traces back to a meeting in St. Louis in 1891. Local 1 holds that founding charter and treats it as a standard to live up to.
History
How the Brotherhood started
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1890
Linemen and wiremen organize in St. Louis
Electrical work at the turn of the century was among the deadliest trades in America. Workers wiring the 1890s building boom, including the crews drawn to St. Louis for the Exposition, began organizing for survival: fair pay, and jobsites that didn't kill them.
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1891
The National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers is founded
On November 28, 1891, ten delegates representing roughly 286 electrical workers convened in St. Louis and founded the National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Henry Miller, a traveling lineman, was elected the union's first Grand President. St. Louis, where the local had organized that same month, received the first charter: Local 1. The boarding house where the founders met, at 2728 Martin Luther King Drive, is now the Henry Miller Museum.
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1899
The NBEW becomes the IBEW
With Canadian workers joining the union, the Brotherhood became international: the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, today representing hundreds of thousands of workers across North America.
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1904
Local 1 lights the World's Fair
Local 1 members illuminated the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the first World's Fair lit by electricity, and showed the world what the trade could do.
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1941
The industry's first apprenticeship program
With the St. Louis Chapter of NECA, Local 1 created the electrical industry's first apprenticeship training program. The partnership has since trained more than 10,000 electricians, more than any education program in Missouri, and opened the Electrical Industry Training Center on Hampton Avenue in 1967.
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Today
Wiring the region's next era
More than 7,400 active members and retirees strong, Local 1 is powering the region's defining work, including the $3 billion Armory Innovation Campus and its 120-megawatt data center, built under a project labor agreement with more than 1,050 union construction jobs.
Mission
What we exist to do
Local 1 organizes the electrical workers of the St. Louis region into a union with the power to bargain for real wages, real benefits, and safe jobsites, and supplies our signatory contractors with the best-trained electrical workforce in the market.
We are a labor institution: democratic, disciplined, and accountable to our members. When Local 1 speaks for the electrical trade in this region, it speaks with 130 years of standing behind it.
Jurisdiction
Where we work
Local 1's jurisdiction covers the City of St. Louis and 25 Missouri counties, from Lincoln County in the north to the Arkansas state line in the south, and from Warren and Franklin counties in the west to the Mississippi River in the east.
The local maintains a satellite office in Cape Girardeau to serve members in the southern half of the jurisdiction. If you're an electrician working anywhere in eastern Missouri, this is your local. Not sure? Call the hall.
Leadership
Elected by the members
Local 1's officers are working electricians elected by the membership.
Frank Jacobs
Business Manager. A fifth-generation member with a 44-year career, and President of the St. Louis Building & Construction Trades Council, AFL-CIO.
Kenny Edgar III
President
Daniel Drury Jr.
Vice President
Steve Muehling
Financial Secretary
Bill Clements
Recording Secretary
Leslie Lorenzini
Treasurer
Executive Board
Steve Dussold, James Jones, Josh Peniston, Mike Sabath, Tony Scarpace
Examining Board
Julie Fischer, Bobby Schneider, Daniil Scott