Phuong Tran, Rick Thompson, Alvin Dayoan, Charlotte Stevens, Maria Luisa Sanabria, Ashley Jurado, Luz Varga Garcia, Kayela Jones, Rocio Gianelli and Rene Cruz Martinez at the SF Board of Supervisors.
IBEW 1245 members and staff showed up in force at a San Francisco Board of Supervisors Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee hearing examining PG&E’s response to the December fire at the Mission Substation which left portions of San Francisco without power for several hours.
As city officials raised questions about the outage and restoration timeline, IBEW 1245 took the opportunity to help city leaders better understand the technical challenges, as well as the difficult and dangerous conditions crews face when responding to a major substation incident.
Speaking directly to city officials, IBEW 1245 Business Manager Bob Dean highlighted the extraordinary skill and coordination required of the workforce that responds when communities lose power.
1245 Business Manager Bob Dean addresses the SF Board of Supervisors.
Dean explained that restoring service after an event like a substation fire involves far more than simply flipping a switch — it requires carefully diagnosing the problem, isolating damaged equipment, rebuilding critical infrastructure, and methodically bringing the system back online.
Assistant Business Manager Hunter Stern also spoke to the committee, noting that increasingly hostile rhetoric directed at the company can often fall on the workers who operate and maintain the system. He also noted that the same workers who absorb the community’s hostility are the very same highly skilled and dedicated workers who drop everything and respond when outages occur.
1245 members attended the hearing to stand in solidarity with their coworkers and to ensure that the voices of the frontline workforce were heard. “I was really proud to stand up for my 1245 brothers and sisters,” said IBEW 1245 Organizing Steward Ashley Jurado. “The work they do is extraordinary and it meant a lot to me to make sure that was heard.”
As the City continues its discussions, IBEW 1245 will continue to show up for its members and make sure the voices of the skilled workers who operate and restore the system are part of the conversation.
Thank you to all of those who supported this effort, including: Hunter Stern, Eileen Purcell, Phuong Tran, Rene Cruz Martinez, Charlotte Stevens, Rick Thompson, Bob Dean; and members: Maria Luisa Sanabria, Kayela Jones, Rocio Gianelli, Alvin Dayoan, Luz Varga Garcia, and Ashley Jurado.