Quote:
Originally Posted by Superman
My profession has to do with public work and labor relations. When Western Washington had the "Innagural Day Storm" back in the early '90's (80+ mph winds) and hundreds of thousands were without power, a call went out to neighboring states and the line crews came. Yup, we were grateful and we needed them. However.....
.....the other side of the story is that our PUD's and power companies guaranteed those workers double-time pay 24 hours per day for three weeks or whenever they were no longer needed, which ever came last. Linemen make pretty good money at the straight time rate. Just sayin'.......
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Working on live wires in the calm sunshine is dangerous, let alone in a rain storm. You can get killed driving to the job, fall off a pole, have a pole/tree/transformer.. fall on you, have someone that does not know what they are doing fire up a generator and back feed the line you are working on and kill you, we had a lineman badly burned when a hydraulic line split on his bucked truck, trapped 30 feet in the air with a flame thrower on you. A lineman fell from a high tower on a main transmission line in eastern Wa. a few weeks ago, left a wife and kids. They get paid good money because it takes skill and is dangerous. It takes a 3 year apprenticeship usually after working as a groundman for several years. and somewhere around half washout. They will also work a 24 hour day during a storm, taking short naps in their trucks.
Note; I make the power, I'm not a lineman. Our company is working on mutual aid agreement so they can go East and help.