The Washington/Seattle-Metro Storm and power down procedure guideline manual is moving ahead slowly but surely. The Qwest Seattle Metro management team met 3 weeks ago and the combined CWA/Qwest team met March 3.
CWA was represented by myself, and reps from 7810, 7803 and 7800. The Qwest contingent consisted of area managers and directors from all work groups with Stella Ley, Director Const and Engineering as committee chairperson.
The biggest areas of concern were the ineffective paging system, tech distribution, liaison with various power companies, RT powering up training, annual fall procedure refresher training, quarterly testing of paging system and continual up grading of the plan concepts.
The addressing of the problems experienced after the last two storm events by Qwest management with both the significant urging and co-upgrading effort of CWA was a refreshing mutual effort and hopefully the final results will rectify many of the problems previously experienced.
There has been a number of WISHA citations issued since the last newsletter was distributed. Even though Qwest is the fined party of a WISHA citation, the employee involved is named which could and has resulted in disciplinary actions being taken against the employee by Qwest. The citations issued by WISHA were for violations of both life threatening and standard safety items. I.E.
These citations were issued for very basic safety issues. Items that we know how to do and yet we cut a corner. Anyone of those above items could result in a loss of income or serious injury so what was gained? Absolutely nothing. The ultimate failure to follow policy was when a tech pulled up in front of the house of a WISHA compliance officer, got out, put out one cone, jumped into his bucket, went up to his work, came down got back in his truck and left. Luckily for the Qwest employee the WISHA officer was home ill and wasn’t of the disposition to confront the Qwest employee. What did surprise the officer was that it was a Qwest employee who WISHA has always considered the best of the best safety wise and also the number of safety issues that were ignored:
If the compliance officer had been inclined to visit our employee and issue citations the gentleman might have been in a very serious predicament, not to say the potential for injury that he exposed himself to.
Remember you never know who may be around. Most people don’t drive around with neon signs proclaiming their intentions – but that should not be of concern to us. We get paid-get trained-get the equipment and are protected by laws to do the right and safe thing. Not doing it right and safe is laziness. The “just this once” syndrome has killed a lot of workers, don’t you become a statistic. Do it right. Do it Safe.
One parting thought. Always contact your supervisor for any safety concern. Give them a chance to handle it but never feel that you can’t contact me or any other local officer, steward or union appointed safety rep on a particular issue. Don’t be intimidated into feeling that you did the wrong thing or went behind someone’s back by talking to a CWA union or safety person, it is your right. If that particular event does happens then we as your union people really want to become evolved.
Remember if you are invited into a little attitude adjustment one on one with your supervisor or suspect it may be or if it becomes disciplinary in nature ask for a Union rep. Your supervisor doesn’t have to ask you if you want representation but they must grant it if you ask, period. It’s federal law.
Dennis Garrett
Local 7804 Vice President and Safety Officer
Regional MOSHC Representative.
253-640-1253
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