Welcome to IEC's updated grassroots and political website. I hope you visit this site on a daily basis to get the latest news on our industry.

One of the reasons that I joined IEC was the appeal of our organization's core philosophy of free markets and open competition. This ideal connects with most of us, as open and free commerce has allowed us to become successful business owners and leaders in our chosen profession.

From the U.S. Congress to state legislatures down to the local level, your elected representatives debate issues that affect your business on a daily basis. Issues like card check union elections, government mandates prevailing wages, taxes, and health care. Government regulates the apprenticeship programs that IEC chapters run; it regulates the work conditions on your job sites; it mandates the pay and benfits you provide your employees. The government has an impact on most aspects of our businesses and our lives.

In order for us to get our merit shop, open competition message across, it is important that government see us as an industry, and not merely as individuals. Numbers matter. As an industry, we employ tens of thousands of trained, skilled men and women. As an industry, we purchase billions of dollars in materials, equipment, tools, and other products, thus supporting the jobs created by our suppliers and other industry partners.

If we, as business men and women and members of IEC, want to keep our "independent" label while fully embracing the free market, merit shop business philosophy, then we must come together as advocates when we exercise our right to petition our government.