Letters to the Editor
-
Not quite the whole story
Dong and others....
Yes, utilities are deregulated, but all a utility would have to do to bump up pay is to create a business case and request a rate hike from the PSC. They'd probably get it. At least where I live they would.
Pay wasn't even the issue. A good lineman could easily make $60+/yr after a few years. There's plenty of overtime to be had. The issue was getting a "qualified" candidate from the get go. One poster mentioned failed national drug poilcy. I agree with that. Many perfectly good lineman candidates washed out because of a drug conviction. Most, however, couldn't pass the pre-employment written tests which mostly were placed at an 8th grade level. (Another failing from a broad societal perspective.)
Our challenge was to find someone who 1) liked working with his or her hands 2) didn't mind hard dangerous work 3) was "smart" enough to pass the written tests while 4) were able to pass the criminal background.
Not an easy task in this day and age.
Utilities are also complicit. They're too conservative. They don't like change. They don't attract young employees. They're top heavy with older employers. And when we did workforce planning, it was like pulling teeth to have them fund extra slots to account for all projected attrition during lineman training.
Finally no, it's not the government's responsibility to prop up utilities. However, it is their responsibility to ensure reliable electrical service. That service is going to seriously be compromised in short order.
-
Maybe not such a good idea
"Wires have a way of snapping and zapping after a strong quake, or even a fire storm for that matter."
Underground wires don't do very well in earthquakes, either, and they're a heckuva lot more difficult to repair. A two hour bucket truck job becomes an all day backhoe job when the wires are buried, and that's assuming you know where the damage is.
-
Misunderstanding About Wages
I know everyone learned in grade school that in a free-market economy you get paid according to the value of your labor — but Andrew Leonard documents an excellent example here of where that mistaken idea falls down.
The thing is, you get paid for your labor in a free market according to how easy you are to replace, not the actual value of the work you do. As barriers to entry in skilled blue-collar work increase, so must wages. Likewise, as workers come to have (or for reasons of systemic instability need to preserve) more options, it becomes harder to find people willing to train for and accept jobs without portable skillsets. It's a pretty simple relationship, and it doesn't have to do with the "popularity" of certain careers.
There is, of course, a corollary to that principle. You can keep current wages steady, but you have to remove some of the existing barriers to entry or recruit workers who don't have other options.
Or do both at the same time. If the telcos guaranteed green card sponsorship and subsidy for training, no strings attached, plus an above-board $60k a year job on completion, there are no end of guys in my town who would line up around the block to become phone company line workers (and taxpaying legal residents).
You could solve the problem in an afternoon (plus a couple of years to get people through the training regimen). The question to ask is, why aren't the telcos doing it?
-
skills shortage or just trades that havent kept up?
My husband is just now completing his electrical apprenticeship (in Australia). While I can't speak to the specific problems of the skills shortage for linesmen in America, I've seen quite a bit of coverage of it here.
There seems to be an assumption that Gen X/Y aren't hardworking, or aren't interested in "blue collar" jobs. This really doesn't reflect the reality of the situation. As mentioned in previous posts, High school does not prepare or even encourage students to take the "tradie" path instead of the "4 year uni" path. The trades are seen as what you go into if you were "too dumb" to go to a real school, which is too bad.
The trades themselves are also a problem. My husband works for a pack of f*ckwits, many of whom WERE to dumb to go to a real school. This sort of environment doesn't encourage him or other smart hardworking young people to enter the trades.
He had to do a four year apprenticeship (which in Australia is LONGER than a university degree which only takes 3 years) to become qualified. This included 8 hours a week of course-time, and the rest of the week working onsite.
Apprentices are often given the worst and most physically demanding jobs on the site (ever try digging a trench for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? It is literally "back-breaking" work), and the quality of their actual on-the-job education is entirely upon the whims of their employer. Employers are often not interested in training up apprentices, but rather simply getting as much "cheap labour" out of them as possible.
Once he is qualified, he is ONLY qualified to work in one state. Should he wish to move to another state in Australia, or god forbid, another country, he will have to take his apply for recognition and take another test. I earned my bachelor's degree in America and my Masters in Australia, and both countries recognize my degrees. I can go essentially wherever I want and my qualifications are recognized. The same is absolutely NOT true for the trades, especially the electrical trade in which there are many local regulations and laws the electrician must be aware of.
After becoming an electrician (or even the more specific career of a linesman), he can only ever be an electrician. After working on work sites for 30 years, he can not become a carpenter or plumber. He can only EVER use his electrician's qualification to be an electrician. I can use my undergraduate degree in English to do quite a few things, and work in quite a few different fields. I can build on my undergraduate degree with postgraduate qualification and get credit for the study I have already done. A tradesman/woman can not. They are literally STUCK in that field, with no chance for mobility.
Now, $60,000 a year sounds nice, but back breaking work for initial low pay, patchy employer led training, and a qualification that can't transfer from state to state or job fields doesn't sound quite as appealing. And many university graduates will eventually make more than $60,000 for a lot less hassle.
Making a trade qualification more like a university degree, which allows the holder to work in different countries/states and in different construction/engineering related fields would be a good first step to bringing people back to the trades. Currently, the trades system is still rooted in the early colonial days, where the apprentice took over the master's work, and never left his home town. People in gen Y/X want flexibility, as we've seen what happened to our parents who did the same job all their lives then got 'laid off', and found their skill sets were redundant.