By Ron Cochran
March has ended with a big bang. We all pitched in and helped with many different activities while continuing to support our main staff assignments.
Mark Rolow is a new staff member with a PG&E-GC assignment and will be helping Outside Line as needed in the southern part of our jurisdiction. Ralph Armstrong has been stretched thin while still pulling his weight with the daily assignments. Ralph continues to work on safety issues for the entire membership. Ralph helped to organize multiple Linemen safety seminars in March, while still helping to organize several new contractors. Liz McInnis is also organizing new contractors and new members.
Organizing is extremely labor intensive to get a first contract. Most folks think that’s the end, when in reality, when you are top-down organizing it’s just the beginning. There are formal new member orientations, and countless calls from the new contractors and members on the 5-W’s. Employers want to know “Who” is covered by contract and how to report on them. The members want to know “What” is in their new benefits package and “When” it’s effective. The members always want to know “Why” they’re paying working fees.
All these things are covered in negotiations and orientations, but there is so much information covered it has to be gone over again. Which gets us to the “Where,” everybody wants to know where we are? A few of us are servicing dozens of contracts and recently passing 2,500 members working in construction groups and in four different Hiring Halls.
We also receive great support from our dispatchers and office staff. There are always problems with reports, union tickets, reporting of hours, and the list goes on. Another reason we are able to process so much work through the queue is all the new technology. All of us are able to talk to the members and employers in most cases 24/7 by cell. All of our members have our cell numbers and most have them programmed into their cell phones.
We can also dispatch 24/7 for storm work and have for the last several years now. Mobile email and texting have become HUGE tools for us. We have a growing membership that prefers to text. This has taken the place of many phone calls. We can push and pull information to the membership in seconds. We have large texting groups and our members have large texting groups. If the information is good, it only takes a short time to spread it out, and if the information is bad it seems to be shared instantaneously. We all have the ability to“Skype” from our laptops and have a few “techno” members that prefer to Skype us. We understand this technology is already in “smart cell phones” in Japan and will hit the US market in the next generation of smart cell phones.
We are still playing around with the weekly electronic newsletter by email. It’s been a real rookie start, not much interest with only 60 members subscribed. We haven’t been very consistent in our distribution either, although I have recently learned a trick or two. Keeping the newsletter under 200 words is the key and throwing in a photo will help. We would really like to grow the circulation to all members in the construction groups. All in all the whole team likes their jobs and is willing to put in long hours to help the members.
Organizing
We have recently signed the following new contractors; Hutchins Paving, White Construction, Greg Shandel Construction, and Terra Firma. We still are working on details in these first contracts. We had 45 new pending members in February. We don’t have the real numbers for March as yet, but it’s close to 25 new pending members. We are currently trying to organize several companies “top down.”
We also have had new member growth in the Pole Test and Treatment sector and the AMI work on PG&E and SMUD properties.
Work Outlook
In Outside Line Construction work remains slow. Par Electric recently picked up 300 + Transmission poles for PG&E. Wilson won the WAPA 230KV bid. We expect the work to take off in the May time frame. As we have been saying, we do not expect many pole replacement jobs this year. The scope of work will mainly be Transmission, Substations, some Trolley, Wind Farm, Solar and Oil Refinery work. Please come to the unit meeting for specific details.
Grievances
Wow, I mean Wow. We have more than a dozen grievances in the oral stage with a least two in step three (written stage). They range from wrongful terminations, hostile work environment and referral abuse by the contractor. The grievance in the direct referral bypass case, a contractor directly hired a groundmen and it took several months for us to find out. This will be a big ticket grievance for lost member wages.
Contact Renegotiations
We are current on all our contracts, with five negotiations planned in the fall of 2010.
The Traffic Signal members recently had a shock. National Electric Benefit Fund “NEBF” filed a lawsuit against our largest traffic signal employer, Republic ITS. There was a settlement between the two parties with language changes to the contract. In the past if there were excess monies from the cafeteria health care plan the monies were placed on the member’s paycheck. The settlement was to now place those monies into the members National Electrical Annuity Plan “NEAP” accounts.
There are several different strong opinions with lots of emotions from this action. We have held an informational meeting and will hold more in the future.
NV Energy
We finished the month by helping the Nevada retirees that work for Sierra Pacific Power Company (SPPC), now known as NV Energy. The company has changed the retiree medical. The changes in short will eat up the retirees’ whole monthly pension payments in just a few years with the escalating costs of the monthly insurance premiums.
We were able to join Nevada’s retirees’ club President, Ron Borst, Vice President, Tom Bird, and organizer Rita Weisshaar, in a recent rally and picket line against the troubling things NV Energy is doing to the workers that made the company strong. This picket line was supported by several different unions.
Training
The week of March 22 the Cal-Nev JATC held the NCCCO crane training in the Vacaville office for the Outside Line group. It went very well and we anticipate a very high member pass rate.
Book Status
Linemen Book 1 has 56 members; Linemen Book II – 72 members; Linemen Book III- 3; Linemen Book IV- 63; Groundman Book I has 20 members; Grd Book II-18; Grd Book III-113; Grd Book IV-121 Line Equipment Man Book I has 19; Book II -12, Book III-13
Apprentice status as of March 10, 2010: We currently have 229 Outside Line apprentices registered in our JATC program.12 apprentices are working out of Local 1245; 140 are working out of Local 47; Zero working out of Local 396; 77 are off of work (3 are on leave of absence – 1 on disability).
We graduated 11 apprentices in 2010 to journeyman lineman. We have not indentured any apprentices for 2010.
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