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COCHISE — After four decades in the electrical business, Pete Swiatek has seen his fair share of changes in the industry.
Sitting in the shade of a tarp, hard hat on, Swiatek watches as dozens of linemen scale 30-foot utility poles in the early morning.
“We used to free-climb them,” he said, recalling the days when he climbed the wooden poles, hand over hand, with nothing but a pair of gloves and spiked boots.
The linemen climbing today were using a technique not far removed from that, however a leather strap wrapped around the pole and attached to their waist helped them to distribute some of their weight against the pole. When they reach the top of the pole, linemen could then use the strap to secure themselves to the crossarm, the perpendicular piece of wood at the peak of the pole that holds the power lines, for support.
  
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“We didn’t have buckets either,” said Swiatek, the maintenance and operations supervisor for Sulphur Springs Electric Cooperative, while looking over at the trucks on the field, fitted with hydraulic platforms that can raise a linemen up to the top of a utility pole in seconds.
More than 80 linemen, or journeymen, as they are called by those in the industry, came from all over the state to this field just west of the Arizona Electric Power Cooperation’s Apache Generation Station on South Highway 191 for the annual Grand Canyon State Electric Cooperative Association’s Linemen’s Rodeo.
The competition, held Tuesday morning, tests the workers’ skills at various aspects of their job, many of which involved being suspended 30 feet in the air on a utility pole.
“You have to look at the pole when you’re climbing,” Swiatek said. “If you look up at the sky, you get a little bit of vertigo.”
Three different contests are held on the grid of 12 utility poles: the crossarm changeout, the obstacle course and the equo-potential grounding events. Two of the contests are done by a team of two linemen, while the third is an individual event. All require at least one lineman to scale the utility pole while completing various tasks along the way, such as securing a fuse from one side of a cross arm to another.
Linemen in training, called apprentices, compete side by side with their more experienced co-workers during the event, so it doubles as a kind of training program.
Anselmo Torres Jr., chief engineering and operations officer for Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative, said changing educational choices, as well as competitive practices among electrical companies, have created a shortage of new linemen.
“There are not that many kids going into the field,” Torres said.
Many of those who are entering the field come with an engineering degree, and are not looking for a job out on the power lines.
“They would rather be working indoors, they would rather be doing work on a computer, not this hands-on kind of work,” he said.
The shortage is leaving some positions open for years. “We’ve been struggling for probably two or three years to fill five positions,” Torres said. “There’s a big, big demand for them right now.”
Training new linemen takes years, said Earl Wobensmith, safety coordinator for Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative. Two hundred hours of classes and 8,000 hours of field training guarantee at least a four-year apprenticeship before becoming a full-fledged lineman.
The extensive training period, coupled with low number of new workers, has led to competitive efforts by other companies to lure experienced linemen to work for them, Torres said. Some perks intended to attract skilled workers include signing bonuses and first months rent paid by the company, he said. The problem is exacerbated by company policies that prevent hiring family members of employees. “The majority of these men are very dedicated and proud of their jobs,” he said. “A lot of fathers have their sons become journeymen. The sad thing about it is we don’t hire family. We have a nepotism policy.”
Even efforts to keep their employees at their best seem to work against them. “Part of the problem with hiring apprentices is you have to have the right ratio to journeymen/linemen,” Torres said.
In order to keep training at a high level of quality, SSVEC tries to maintain twice as many experienced linemen as apprentices, a policy that does little to stifle the current drought of new workers.
Despite these problems, SSVEC has managed to maintain a knowledgeable and skilled crew, with 10 members taking first or second place out of the four team and individual contests.
DEREK JORDAN can be reached at 515-4680 or by e-mail at derek.jordan@svherald.com.
not union wrote on Oct 16, 2008 9:55 PM: