Substation Tech./Lineman

[THE KID]

I'm interested to see if there are companies that have Substation Tech. that are also Lineman. We have a lineman with 18 yrs. experience, he was promoted to Subs which is consider a promotion. Now the company says that he is not qualified to do line work.

[Trampbag]

Well, excuse me. Once a lineman, always a lineman. Some companies try to say a person cannot bid back to a position they left. Either your company is not suffering from the acute Lineman shortage, which I find a little difficult to believe, or they are suffering from both a Lineman shortage and unable to replace the hand in substations as well. I can promise you a lineman can pick up a job pretty easily elsewhere even if the company, like yours, says he can’t.

[THE KID]

The situation is I work for a Municipal. The Sub man was also a standby Foreman. The company has cut back all over-time. We went from 12 hours over-time for the weekend to one hour per day. We just had 2 linemen retire and don't have the money to replace them. We have 7 linemen, one works second shift from 12 to 8:30 and has standby for the night. 2 men on service truck and two (3 man ) crews. We service about 13,000 customers. The sub man can't even come in and help except as a last resort. The 3 man crews consist of 2 linemen and a apprentice.

[Trampbag]

And so, because the municipality elected officials mismanaged the system they want you to buck up and give it one for the Gipper. You can expect to have these wiz bangs suggest you take a pay cut for the good of all. They, of course, won’t be prepared to give up any of their perks or stipends and will actually say they need more to compensate for a shortfall, caused by their own ineptitude, but you will just have to do more with less. You have to keep the system going, right????

Funny, I have never heard that story before. You have an unique situation on your hands.

You know what to tell them?

Just because you have a panic on your hands it doesn't constitute and emergency on my part.

[thrasher]

The company I am at now, all apparatus people are former journeyman linemen. Only a journeyman is allowed to apply for the job, which includes 2 years of additional training. The reason I say former journeyman is as apparatus they no longer climb and in fact are no longer qualified for pole top rescue. In my, and the company's book, if you don't climb you are not a journeyman. Apparatus does do work out of buckets and do regularly practice bucket rescue. My former company had a pure Apparatus training program and so the apparatus people in most cases never started as journeymen.