OTEC USING EXPENSIVE OUT-OF-STATE STRIKEBREAKERS, A RISK TO CONSUMER AND WORKER SAFETY
In response to electrical workers’ ongoing strike at Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative, OTEC has contracted with Minnesota-based Strom Engineering, a firm that specializes in strikebreaking, to bring workers from across the country to replace IBEW Local 125 members who walked off the job to protest unfair labor practices and OTEC’s failure to bargain a fair contract. These workers appear to have been lured to eastern Oregon by Strom and OTEC from other parts of the country on promises of very high pay, with apparently little verification of the workers’ skills or safety certifications.
To break the strike at OTEC, Strom has offered workers from across the country $90 per hour, plus $168 per day for per diem expenses to cover hotels and food. These positions offer weekly compensation of over $4,700, the equivalent of over $245,000 per year—nearly twice what the striking IBEW Local 125 journeymen linemen receive in base pay. Strom and OTEC also have promised those replacement workers that they will each receive a guaranteed minimum of 120 hours of pay, or $10,800, no matter when the strike ends.
The only apparent certification that Strom and OTEC have required for these strikebreaker positions is a Class A Commercial Driver’s License. By contrast, IBEW Local 125 power line workers are specifically certified in numerous essential job skills—including in safely utilizing hot sticks, which involves carefully using insulated fiberglass sticks to work with live high-voltage power lines. The hot stick method is widely used in the Pacific Northwest but not in other parts of the country from which Strom and OTEC appear to be bringing in workers.
After the ULP strike began, IBEW Local 125 members and community members observed as the replacement workers arrived at OTEC’s offices and then were sent out to work without any onboarding or safety training. Union members and community members also watched one day early this week as two of the replacement employees arrived in John Day to install a street light, a common job for OTEC line workers. The two workers first struggled to figure out how to extend the outriggers on their service truck, which is crucial for stabilizing the vehicle while the boom and aerial bucket are being extended to work at height. After many efforts, the workers then appeared to fail to install the street light, before they finally descended with the street light and drove off.
Later that day when the replacement workers returned to once again hang the street light, while the union did not witness their work, we did witness and report to city officials all the garbage and wire trimmings that the workers apparently just left at the base of the pole afterwards. Our union workers take a lot of pride in leaving our scenes the same or better than we found them. It is very apparent that these workers do not care about our communities if they feel that leaving trash and wire behind at the scene is an acceptable way to perform the work. Concerned citizens have also
contacted IBEW Local 125 about their experiences of observing replacement workers in OTEC trucks driving unsafely and erratically.
OTEC’s use of power line workers who do not possess sufficient training or certifications causes a significant safety risk to the workers themselves and to the communities that OTEC serves. Rather than cease its unfair labor practices, return a decades-long skilled employee to the line crew, and fairly compensate its workers, OTEC is running a serious safety risk by using a strikebreaking
company from Minnesota to bring in highly paid workers without verifying their training and safety certifications. Those costs—both economic and safety-related—pass on to OTEC’s member owners.
Strom Engineering Corporation advertises itself as one of the nation’s premier scab labor providers, offering “strike staffing services” in a variety of industries. Strom has a long history of strike-busting in Oregon, and across the country. Strom sent an estimated 150 strikebreakers to Daimler’s Portland Western Star truck plant during a 22-day strike in 2013. Strom also deployed strikebreakers across the picket lines to Allegheny Technologies Inc. during a months-long lockout of steelworkers at a facility in Albany, Oregon. Strom has showed up to unsuccessfully bust strikes of pulp mill workers in Maine, aircraft manufacturing workers in Indiana, aerospace factory workers in California, and sugar factory workers in North Dakota, among others.
The community deserves much better from their Cooperative then what they are receiving currently. IBEW Local 125 urges community members to contact OTEC’s CEO Les Penning and demand that OTEC resolve the ULP strike and put the IBEW members back to work.
