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  1. #1

    Default dear illfingaz, i am 42, no shame

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    I am one of these "union scabs" and saw only your first entry with none of the responses posted on a door at the Madison work center. Naturally, like you, I was interested in seeing what other IBEW lineman thought. Thank you brothers for not disappointing. ILLFINGAZ is downplaying the tension that is going on here but it is completely one sided. These "brothers" are following work crews around high beaming and cutting them off on the road. Grouping up w/ 8 other guys and cussing at them while working and calling them rats and scabs. Teaming up with friends at dispatch to try and set guys up. Using racial slurs at my apprentice. Trying to run down a guy on foot with a truck in a parking lot. All real incidents... is there a union term for a$$hole? Thus far, there has been no retaliation.
    ILLFINGAZ, when your employer decided to kick all contractors off their property do you think they weren't breaking contracts? Did we blame you for doing the work we were hired to do? Use your head. I am an IBEW Journeyman Lineman and my home is CT. I have every right to do the work I was hired to do. You like to say how ill qualified we are but the FACT is since 42 hands took over trouble shooting CL&P is reporting that their average outage time has been cut IN HALF.
    As far as your contract, If you have wire down in town A and the shooter in town B is sitting on his a$$ why wouldn't he want to help his brother and wouldn't the employer want him to. Your real union issue is that you have a business manager that doesn't want to lose his cushy job by merging the two books.
    While you hopefully think about this a bit, maybe in the meantime you can lay off the real IBEW lineman. As for me, after endless harassment and nearly being run over, sadly, lu 420 and 457 will never mean brother.

  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by Josh42 View Post
    I am one of these "union scabs" and saw only your first entry with none of the responses posted on a door at the Madison work center. Naturally, like you, I was interested in seeing what other IBEW lineman thought. Thank you brothers for not disappointing. ILLFINGAZ is downplaying the tension that is going on here but it is completely one sided. These "brothers" are following work crews around high beaming and cutting them off on the road. Grouping up w/ 8 other guys and cussing at them while working and calling them rats and scabs. Teaming up with friends at dispatch to try and set guys up. Using racial slurs at my apprentice. Trying to run down a guy on foot with a truck in a parking lot. All real incidents... is there a union term for a$$hole? Thus far, there has been no retaliation.
    ILLFINGAZ, when your employer decided to kick all contractors off their property do you think they weren't breaking contracts? Did we blame you for doing the work we were hired to do? Use your head. I am an IBEW Journeyman Lineman and my home is CT. I have every right to do the work I was hired to do. You like to say how ill qualified we are but the FACT is since 42 hands took over trouble shooting CL&P is reporting that their average outage time has been cut IN HALF.
    As far as your contract, If you have wire down in town A and the shooter in town B is sitting on his a$$ why wouldn't he want to help his brother and wouldn't the employer want him to. Your real union issue is that you have a business manager that doesn't want to lose his cushy job by merging the two books.
    While you hopefully think about this a bit, maybe in the meantime you can lay off the real IBEW lineman. As for me, after endless harassment and nearly being run over, sadly, lu 420 and 457 will never mean brother.

    I was on the same page with you, until your last paragraph. Contractual language usually exists for good reason, ie employer abuse. Suggesting that the guy in town B is sitting on his azz is quite self serving.

    lmao that you think a business managers job is cushy, now that's funny!!

    The utility local and the company have a dispute that will ultimately be resolved before,an arbitrator. In order to exert leverage and make a point the utility chose to use IBEW personel instead of non union, they easily could have went non union and they didn't.

    Make your hay when the sun shines Josh. At some point the dispute will be resolved.
    "It is not the critic who counts:The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena" Teddy Roosevelt

  3. #3

    Default ibew smearing

    hey orgnizdllbr,
    obviously I'm wearing my emotion on my sleeve. of course i'm exaggerating about a business managers job being cushy but it is the absolute truth that this guy won't negotiate because he doesnt want to lose his position. he enters negotiations sticking his middle finger two inches from a guys face and saying "f u carpet muncher". these are the first words spoken at negotiations. this is the same mentality the cl &p lineman have when approaching us. it hasn't gotten any better since the ibew backed us.
    as far as lineman b sitting on his a$$, your opinion just shows that you're not from ct. that is 100%
    what is happening. many of the new shooters on our job switched their tickets to remain shooters and all of them will tell you that sitting on a job for hours just to collect overtime was the norm. screw the people without power! every resident of ct can tell you that cl&p stands for connecticuts laziest people.even now that we're doing the troubleshooting i see about 10 clp guys everyday a few blocks from my home taking an entire shift to do a basic three phase tangent transfer. i am not exaggerating! where is the ibew pride?
    maybe the power company is lying about the outage times being cut in half, but, then again when cl&p boasts one of the worst average recovery times in the country its not that hard to believe. factor that in with the lazy mentality these guys are known to have and im inhaling that smoke that someone is blowing
    one of the shops i walk into weekly has a graph depicting cl&p average outage time quarterly compared to the countrys average quarterly. they're about 20 min over for the past 3 years.
    I firmly believe that laziness is a desease and if you let it consume you it will. The cl&p lineman have long past been consumed. i wish you could experience these guys first hand, their work ethic, how they're treating other IBEW good standing members. shame on them for smearing the name of the IBEW



    Quote Originally Posted by Orgnizdlbr View Post
    I was on the same page with you, until your last paragraph. Contractual language usually exists for good reason, ie employer abuse. Suggesting that the guy in town B is sitting on his azz is quite self serving.

    lmao that you think a business managers job is cushy, now that's funny!!

    The utility local and the company have a dispute that will ultimately be resolved before,an arbitrator. In order to exert leverage and make a point the utility chose to use IBEW personel instead of non union, they easily could have went non union and they didn't.

    Make your hay when the sun shines Josh. At some point the dispute will be resolved.

  4. #4

    Default

    I guess we should try to keep this discussion on one page/topic, your description of people sitting on the butts while customers out just to run up OT doesn't sound like any place I've worked or seen but then you get this info from people that evidently did it and then left to follow the money while everybody else was cut to 40 hrs sounds a little suspect as to who was screwing the customers all that time. As far as the animosity towards your group while understandable given some of the circumstances I don't think that type of action is supported by the union and when I say understandable There are plenty of pictures of company trucks left by the troubleshooter organization with severe boom damage diggers with the auger cable shredded and a video of a broken pole that was not braced and when they tried to dig the hole the pole came apart and the three phase 23 went across the road putting a lot of people at risk, that's fact not here say. Just saying you might want to check some of your sources don't listen to what the management tells you they are doing their best to stir up crap to take the pressure off the fact that this Tshooter deal is only supposed to cost 5 million a year and its already around 10 million and thats not counting all to OT your making.

  5. Default

    You know Josh42, there are a few flaws in your little story. We are lazy? We sit on a job just to get more OT? First off, we have safety guidelines that have to be followed, and if something goes wrong because safety was not followed, we get disciplined. We follow their rules. Safety is always priority #1. We do the work that they give to us to do......SAFELY with minimum to no outages if it can be helped. You see 10 C.L.&P. guys everyday taking an entire shift to do a basic 3 phase pole shift????? Are you kidding me? How is that possible when every area work center is understaffed? The biggest crews that go out (if there are enough guys for the job) are a 4 man crew and most of the time it's a 3 man crew even for jobs that require more man power. C.L.&P. has been understaffed for quite some time, and the company wants more with less but has slowed down on hiring new employees. Tell me, how many guys do you use to run trouble per truck, two. We run 1 man per trouble truck, and I run my ass off all day in a truck with no AC, and barely enough time to eat my lunch. So please spare me the BS. You know, I came in here a few months ago and tried to get an understanding of what was going on and if this was allowed because I've never seen crap like this before. I tried to show some respect by not naming Local 42 and if you took, me saying that you guys have no experience in Troubleshooting as a insult, it's not an insult but it is a FACT. Yeah you are linemen but the fact is you had 0 experience in running trouble or working with direct buried lines, ZERO, but see you came in and got a crash course in 1 month from the company on how to do trouble work and direct buried lines. I couldn't do trouble work till after 1 year of becoming a lineman and 6 months of training on the trouble truck. Boy, the company threw that training right out the window to get you guys in here. Now, let's talk about these new shooters who went to local 42 to remain troubleshooters. Are you talking about the guys that came from local 42 to C.L.&P. last year and then went back to local 42 to do our trouble work for more money after we trained them how to run trouble and do direct buried lines? Or, are you talking about the C.L.&P. lineman who has 45yrs. in the company and went to local 42, who has left an apprentice up on a dam pole behind someones house by himself, totaled a company truck? You want to talk about pride? Where was the pride when I got a trouble call a few weeks ago for exposed wires, I get to the address and find a energized 13.8kv padmount transformer left wide open. Talk to the customers and they said it has been open for the whole week of 4th of July. Where was the pride???? See, you're so concerned about getting the dam job done so quick that you forget about being SAFE. Keeping the customer SAFE! Then the company pours you a glass of Kool-Aid and pats you on the back and says you guys are awesome, keep up the good work. Tell me, what do you think the company is gonna say or do to you when someone gets killed? You think they are gonna pat you on the back? Keep drinking that Kool-Aid Josh.

    Quote Originally Posted by Josh42 View Post
    hey orgnizdllbr,
    obviously I'm wearing my emotion on my sleeve. of course i'm exaggerating about a business managers job being cushy but it is the absolute truth that this guy won't negotiate because he doesnt want to lose his position. he enters negotiations sticking his middle finger two inches from a guys face and saying "f u carpet muncher". these are the first words spoken at negotiations. this is the same mentality the cl &p lineman have when approaching us. it hasn't gotten any better since the ibew backed us.
    as far as lineman b sitting on his a$$, your opinion just shows that you're not from ct. that is 100%
    what is happening. many of the new shooters on our job switched their tickets to remain shooters and all of them will tell you that sitting on a job for hours just to collect overtime was the norm. screw the people without power! every resident of ct can tell you that cl&p stands for connecticuts laziest people.even now that we're doing the troubleshooting i see about 10 clp guys everyday a few blocks from my home taking an entire shift to do a basic three phase tangent transfer. i am not exaggerating! where is the ibew pride?
    maybe the power company is lying about the outage times being cut in half, but, then again when cl&p boasts one of the worst average recovery times in the country its not that hard to believe. factor that in with the lazy mentality these guys are known to have and im inhaling that smoke that someone is blowing
    one of the shops i walk into weekly has a graph depicting cl&p average outage time quarterly compared to the countrys average quarterly. they're about 20 min over for the past 3 years.
    I firmly believe that laziness is a desease and if you let it consume you it will. The cl&p lineman have long past been consumed. i wish you could experience these guys first hand, their work ethic, how they're treating other IBEW good standing members. shame on them for smearing the name of the IBEW

  6. Default

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    Ok, had to cut it off last post because it was very late and had to go to bed to get up for work in the morning. Josh42 you said the business manager won't negotiate because he doesn't want to lose his position? That is totally false and couldn't be any farther from the truth. Both business managers have tried to sit down with the company to combine both locals into one local but all the company wants to talk about is getting our guys to do this new Troubleshooting. Here's a (example) of the issues with combining two locals into one. Lets say a guy in LU 420 has 10 yrs. company seniority and 10 yrs. classification seniority and is a lead lineman in his district. A guy in LU 457 has 15 yrs. company seniority and only has 5 yrs classification seniority as a lineman. Local 420 has language in their contract that says if a member of LU 457 comes to LU 420, that member of LU 457 can not carry over his company seniority and must start at the bottom for company seniority in local 420. Local 457 has language in their contract that says if a member of LU 420 comes to LU 457, that member of LU 420 can not carry over his classification seniority and must start at the bottom for classification seniority in local 457. I don't know how good of an example this is but, who is gonna give up what and how do you make it fair for everyone to combine both locals into one? Yeah we all work for the same company but both locals 457 & 420 have different language in their contracts. Both business managers are more than willing to sit down with the company to try and combine both locals into one, but when issues like this comes up the company pukes and don't have nothing to say. So, it's not as easy as you think it is combining both locals into to one.

    Why wouldn't I help my brother (another troubleshooter) in another town if there were wires down?

    We don't have just a town to cover for trouble calls. We have districts which covers several towns. In my district alone we cover 9 towns for trouble calls. One troubleshooter in the north and one in the south of our district. If we have a 911 wires down, an outage or any trouble call for that matter we have a 1/2hr response time. If the south guy needs a hand in my district, yeah I'm on it and on my way to give him a hand. I'll tell you why and for several reasons why we don't go covering trouble calls district to district. First, we have 2 LU's in this company. All qualified linemen, and we all work for the same company but LU 457 doesn't work together (side by side) with LU 420 and LU 420 doesn't work together (side by side) with LU 457. The same reason why we don't work side by side with Western Mass. Light and Power which is also owned by NorthEast Utilities. Still our IBEW brothers, still qualified linemen but different LU's. Tell me, do you or Local 42 go out and work side by side with other contractors of different locals? They're still your IBEW brothers and still qualified linemen. So if you don't do it why would you expect me to do it? Remember what I said about a 1/2hr. response time? Let's say I'm covering the north in my district and they want me to go to another district to lend a hand and it's an hour or more away. The troubleshooter in the south gets called to a 911 wires down burning. Another call comes in for wires down but this time it's on a car and there are people trapped inside. Tell me, who is gonna respond to that call now? The troubleshooter in the south is already tied up on wires down and I'm an hour away in another district giving someone else a hand.

    Bottom line is this. This new ESO group (troubleshooting organization) with 108 guys was voted down for good reasons and the contracts were signed by the company. One, as I said before the 2 LU's can't work together, and two, they said that this new ESO group would get all of the over time and the other linemen sitting home would be called in if needed. Does that sound fair to you? 108 guys getting unlimited overtime while your co-workers are sitting home?

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