For Our Friends at the IBEW:

To be certified as an electrician, you will now get to pay a minimum of $175. It will also cost you at least a half-day's wages to take the test. This fee will be required to verify what you have already proven: at least five years of experience from your apprenticeship program and technical knowledge of the trade.

As the leaders of your brotherhood have put this into affect, maybe you should ask them if they will compensate you for the testing fees and missed wages.

FLAC has stated our position, from the beginning, that certification needs to be FAIR, and inclusive of all electricians or none. We believe that FAIR certification can benefit the industry as a whole. It will be very useful for employers to be able to determine which job applicants are qualified and which are not, and in regards to electrical work, separate the "men from the boys." But, because certification is very limited in the scope of whom it applies to - only C-10 contractors - the proponents of this law have missed the mark on public safety and proving that this was proposed in the hopes of regaining part of the lost market share of union contractors in the C-10 marketplace.

Now consider the number of individuals that will continue to perform "electrical work" that do not have to certify, and how many un-certifiable electricians will go to work for employers who aren't required to hire certified electricians. Does the IBEW leadership have a plan on how to salvage those jobs?