Letters to the Editor
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The teaching of actual skills doesn't serve the political agenda of the school boards
While our educational system is training every rube to be a socially conscience agent of change, we are forgetting to train our people to do actual work. New York public schools are now experimenting with socially aware math (not a typo, socially aware "math"). The local district in my town, which long ago got rid of shop class, is inserting "social justice" lessons into every conceivable nook and cranny, including Geography and History (herstory?). While it may be useful for the ruling class to learn this stuff (and they don't), the majority of Americans would be far better served by being taught a useful skill or two.
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Doesn't seem such a great job to me.
A little research turns up lineman.edu, the site for Northwest Lineman College. Here's what I see:
1. Utilities stopped training their own lineman, and now expect prospective lineman to enroll in lineman college on their own.
2. NLC charges $7717.50 for a four month course.
3. 14% of graduates don't get a job in the field after 3 years of looking.
4. They don't address how many people are unable to complete the program, but they say power companies stopped training their own lineman because success rates of just 20% to 40% were common.
5. "Graduates who limit themselves to work only in their hometown
significantly limit employment opportunities."
6. If normal full time (40 hours/week) pay is $53000, and overtime is double pay, it seems you're only making the peak wage if you work 75 hour weeks.
7. Apparently when you get your first job, you enter an apprentice program, and the salary is quite a bit lower than the article states. Seems like it takes around 4 years of experience to reach the $53000 level.
I'd be sympathetic to the power companies if they hired lineman and paid for their training, and if the starting salaries weren't as low as $12/hour. It seems to me that there are a lot of jobs more attractive, and given the low unemployment rate, it doesn't seem like the power companies are really trying that hard to recruit people. As Dean Baker has remarked about similar "labor shortages", maybe the real problem is the power companies aren't willing to compete for potential employees.
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capitalist only when it suits them
I don't believe in the market as the solution to every problem, but it should solve this one pretty easily. The job of line technician pays X dollars. It sounds like a lot, but paradoxically, it's not enough to attract applicants.
The free market answer is sort of obvious. X dollars isn't enough. There is still a gap between the supply curve and the demand curve. When electric companies are willing to pay enough for this unpleasant, dangerous, yet essential work, they will get applicants for it.
When Senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican--whom I would assume claims to believe in capitalism--says in effect that our youth are lazy and ought to be happy to get these jobs, what's he's saying is that the supply curve is wrong, ergo the market is wrong. Isn't it funny how the market is usually right when it can justify the negative externalities of profitable businesses but is strangely in error when it reflects the values of nation's youth?
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I've read about a similar problem in LA
According to the LA Times story that I read, the problem in LA is that a lot of potential blue collar labor belongs to a gang and has a prison record and smokes weed.
You see, the War on Drugs hasn't been effective at eliminating drug abuse, but it has been very effective at giving poor and working class men prison records and funding the gang lifestyle.
I read that if you're willing to help these guys get out of the gang lifestyle, and you're willing to overlook the prison record and the weed, then you can find people to join your union and work.
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Daughter of Ma Bell here...
My parents met and married while working for Ma Bell. My dad started out climbing poles, back in the mid 50s, and was recruited out of his high school electronics class.
He survived the divestiture of Ma Bell, stayed around long enough to get a hefty buyout offer after 37 years with the phone company (which by then wasn't the Phone Company any more).
Stories like his don't exist any more. A technician job like he had, out of high school, is nonexistent. They'd at least want a 2-year electronics degree (on the student's dime), and who knows how long the job would last?
My dad had the kind of loyalty to his employer that doesn't exist any more either. He was a phone company man through and through, until the divestiture chewed him up and spit him out. He still tells stories about the depression (told by the company "old guys" when dad was young), when the phone company cut everyone's hours equally, but kept everyone on. No one got rich, but no one starved. No one lost their jobs. Try that today, as a corporation, and they'd be laughed out of the marketplace.
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Line Technicians are Regulated
In the electricity industry Line Technicians still work for the regulated parts of utilities (distribution and transmission). So you can't blame capitalism for not working.
I agree with the other posters about how college has failed America. The fact is that working with your hands is a perfectly respectable occupation, and we need to move beyond the rigid thinking that everyone should go to college.
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Asking Dong
AskDong: If the problem is that utilities are regulated, are you saying that if we deregulate distribution and transmission, that wages for line technicians will rise to where they become attractive to young applicants?
That would be a pretty interesting consequence of deregulation, and I don't know enough about the industry to say it won't happen, but I'd love to see it.
One thing that is clear is that no amount of utilities deregulation is going to make electrical line work cool or otherwise result in whatever cultural changes would be needed to change the supply curve.
If you meant something else, please do specify how deregulation is going to result in more line technicians.
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Keine in Deutschland
My partner and I were in Germany last week, and I couldn't help but notice that utility poles were impossible to find in the big cities (we went through Berlin, Cologne, and Munich). The utilities must be underground. Isn't it about time we followed that example? Poles are nice in an old school, nostalgic kinda way, but living as I do near the Hayward Fault, I don't think they are necessarily very prudent anymore. Wires have a way of snapping and zapping after a strong quake, or even a fire storm for that matter.