I see that NSTAR has gotten on the downhill slide of a contract dispute, with management now welcoming union employees back to work. NSTAR's largest union, Utility Workers Union of America Local 369, ratified a four-year contract in June. In the deal, the employee contribution to the medical plan increases incrementally from 15% to 20%, covered workers receive 3% wage increases each year, and the pension plan is maintained for both employees and retirees.

NSTAR Chairman, President and CEO Thomas May is happy with the outcome, convinced that the ̶contract offers fair pay and benefits along with greater staffing flexibility.” The union is happy, too. Gary Sullivan, president of the union local, states, ̶This contract protects the rights of workers and safeguards the health and pension benefits for employees and retirees.”

The contract contains an agreement to hire 150 new workers, many of whom will be performing system maintenance, a key union goal. The union agreed to work afternoon shifts during the summer months to help improve customer-response times. The strike by 1900 NSTAR workers wasn't a long one. Crews were off the job site for only a few weeks, which is good news. If strikes can't be avoided, let's attempt to resolve differences as quickly as we can.

Raised in a Union Family

My mother was a union member. In fact, the union saved her job when she was asked to transfer to another location to make way for what her friend described as a ̶short skirt.” My dad was more of an individualist who didn't buy into the whole concept of unions. I wound up somewhere in the middle. Here are my thoughts: If company management respects employees and treats workers like family, then we don't need unions. Some unions are proud of the fact that they have never gone on strike and try to focus on the value their members provide. Other unions, once entrenched, get greedy and push for whatever they can get, regardless of what the business can support.

The only employee strike I've personally experienced came about when I was in my late 20s. I always thought the strike at Georgia Power was more about dissention in union leadership than anything the company had done or failed to do. Or, looking back, maybe the power plant workers were a more contentious bunch than the distribution line workers. Anyway, for the most part, the strike was a civil affair.

I was shipped down to Macon, Georgia, U.S., to work on a replacement crew catching trouble and doing construction. Taking a lab guy and putting him outside in 100°F (38°C) heat to work 12-hour days, six days a week can bring about some interesting behaviors. During my stint in the field, I quickly came to the conclusion that engineers need to get out in the field more. They were designing jobs that made line work harder than it needs to be. I've always been impressed with the work ethic of power linemen. But being on the other side of a wrench, I realized that linemen, who provide that all-important first-line contact with customers, are the heart of a utility.

Working in the field brings a sense of urgency that doesn't exist in an office. Here's an example of a typical experience I had: An underground cable that fed a strip mall had failed. I was carefully splicing the cable when a stylist from a beauty shop asked when the power would be back on so that she could finish drying her patrons' hair. Then the proprietor of an ice-cream parlor, with a bit of a ̶tone” in his voice, asked me to speed things up. His product was melting along with his profits. A little later, the foreman, a quite crusty fellow, came over and commented on both my intelligence and my speed.

Today, I'm tracking a fairly nasty strike developing in Canada. Around 1000 Hydro One workers have walked off the job. The members of the union, the Society for Energy Professionals, which represents engineers, supervisors and information technologists, have voted down a deal that would pay new workers at a lower pay scale than existing employees. Hydro One is trying to find a way to compensate for existing salary and pensions that the company says are higher than industry average. The workers also are being asked to increase their workweek from 35 hours to 40 hours. As in the NSTAR case, I hope this strike can be settled before emotions get too raw and animosities are created that could last for decades.

A Life Radically Changed

Even though the Georgia Power strike was mild by historical standards, lives were forever altered, mine included. I failed to mention that a city boy from Atlanta met and married a Macon girl. My involvement in the strike lasted three or four weeks; our marriage is going on 23 years. Lives are irrevocably changed by major events. Mine was changed for the better.