 
Pa. Local Completes Nonunion Windmill Project
December 2008, Electrical Worker
 In a strong display of the IBEW Code of Excellence in action, members of Philadelphia Local 126 were called in to complete a 10-mile cable project across rugged terrain that had stymied a nonunion company’s efforts for weeks.
California-based Edison Mission Energy last year hired a nonunion contractor to build a line connecting two windmills in rural Somerset County, Pa. After 11 months of stop-and-go work, and with the deadline looming, the project was only half complete. So Edison decided to take another approach.
“The nonunion company didn’t have the manpower, expertise or equipment to complete the task,” Local 126 Business Manager Tom Leach said. “At the last minute, Edison realized they should get a union crew to finish the work.”
Edison contacted Michel’s Power Co., a Wisconsin-based contractor that hires IBEW journeymen linemen, operators and apprentices for windmill jobs and other projects. The contractor brought in more than a dozen Local 126 linemen, apprentices and machine operators in July to finish the job.
Putting in 10-hour days, six days a week, the union crew revised much of the previous company’s faulty work before stringing the remaining half of overhead lines needed to connect the two windmills.
“The IBEW guys got done in eight weeks the amount of work that the nonunion company did in 11 months,” said Eric Hoffman, Rockford, Ill., Local 196 member and regional superintendent at Michel’s Power. “No one missed any days, and the union hall bent over backwards to help get the job done quickly to save money.”
Aside from know-how, training and equipment, the IBEW crew exercised higher levels of safety precautions than the previous company on the site.
“The nonunion company hadn’t trained their workers in proper ways to handle live cables,” journeyman lineman Brad Nadzom said. “Even though this was against regulations, the company seemed more interested in paying a fine if they got caught doing something unsafe rather than taking the time and money to train their workers. They asked themselves the question, ‘How can we do this cheaply?’ when they should have asked, ‘How can we protect our employees?’”
Leach credited the linemen’s solid knowledge of their craft in completing the job safely and ahead of schedule. “These guys are highly skilled and highly productive,” he said. “They strive to live up to the IBEW Code of Excellence whenever they step onto a worksite.”
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