Editor’s note: This article is by Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, of the Valley News, in which it was first published Dec. 19, 2014.
BRADFORD — In a sense, the job of a telephone line worker begins with what industry insiders call the “pole test.”
That’s the exhilarating moment when, after their first week of training, new recruits are asked to scale a 20-foot utility pole using little more than a 1-inch spike strapped onto each foot.
Today, workers are protected by an ingenious bit of strapping called a bucksqueeze, a belt that loops around the pole; if a worker’s grip loosens, the bucksqueeze cinches tight, holding the worker fast.
But on a Friday afternoon in October 1998, when teenaged Bradford resident Josh Allen took the pole test at a training facility in Marlborough, Mass., bucksqueezes hadn’t yet become the norm.
Allen had to free-climb through the rite of passage, hugging the pole with his arms as he scaled its heights, while two instructors looked on.
Students who passed would become line workers. Those who failed would have to find a new career.
Today, Allen is one of 1,700 FairPoint Communications workers from Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont who went on strike in October after a failed contract negotiation.
When Allen took the pole test, FairPoint didn’t exist in its modern form. Allen had been recruited out of high school by Bell Atlantic, years before it would transform into Verizon, which was then purchased by FairPoint.
When Allen, then 19, began his ascent up the utility pole, the stakes were high.
Slipping and falling could mean any of a long list of potential injuries, the very least of which was two arms full of splinters.
Allen’s primary concern wasn’t avoiding injury. It was getting the job. Most of his friends had gone on to college, many to become office workers.
Allen didn’t want to become a cubicle dweller. He was one of a shrinking number of young people who believed that they could achieve success working outdoors in blue-collar pursuits, keeping pace with their more educated peers by working hard for a single employer for their entire professional lives.
At the time, the concept of loyalty between workers and companies was in a state of serious decline, as the number of people choosing to stick with a single employer shrank.
Federal labor statistics show that the percentage of workers aged 44 or older who had stayed with a single employer for at least 10 years dropped from a high of 58 percent in 1983 to a low of 43 percent in 2006.
Still, as he hitched himself up, Allen thought he was reaching not only for the top of the pole, but for a piece of the American dream.
Unlike some of his classmates, Allen passed the test easily. And once his feet safely touched back down, he was exultant. Bell Atlantic was a good company, with health care and retirement benefits. His base pay began at about $15,000 a year and, if he stuck with them, he could retire in as little as 30 years.
“I’m actually an employee now,” he remembers thinking. “I’ve got a job.”
Today, the status of that job is in doubt, and the relationship between Allen and FairPoint is on shaky ground. A contract dispute, with $700 million at stake, has become personal — FairPoint CEO Paul Sunu released a statement this week that said that the workers, who make an average of $82,500 per year, are out of the mainstream of Vermont’s workforce, and said a contingency workforce has been subjected to vandalism and sabotage.
Allen and other union members responded by questioning Sunu’s annual compensation package, about $4.2 million, and accusing the company of squeezing workers while raking in large profits.
Through thick and thin
Allen agrees that he’s been well-compensated for his work with the company — he said his base salary is about $70,000 — but says he’s earned every penny in a job that is both demanding and dangerous.
He loves working for FairPoint, he said, but that doesn’t mean the job is an easy one.
“I take a lot of late-night calls,” he said. “You’re in the dark, in the cold, alone, solving this problem. It’s a very hazardous job. We’re within inches of the power, all the time.”
That point was brought home to him in the early 2000s, when he was sent to Rhode Island to inventory the tools and safety equipment of a line worker who had been electrocuted by a live strand of wire.
More than a decade later, the memory of working through the contents of the melted tool bucket is still strong for Allen.
“It was actually a very emotional feeling, literally to be able to smell the burned flesh. You know, you burn your hair, you singe your arm hair or something around a campfire, it stinks,” he said. “It’s that smell that you know and you don’t really want to smell.”
Allen also pointed to other hurdles he’s faced on the job.
In the aftermath of major flooding caused by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, Allen estimates he put in about 100 hours a week, rebuilding the area around the Quechee Covered Bridge.
He’s spent much of his career in the treetops, but a lot of the Quechee job was underground, a terrain that carries its own dangers. Beneath the manholes, Allen said it wasn’t unusual to run into dead raccoons and live snakes.
Then there are the hazards associated with working alongside a road. Allen hasn’t been injured, but only because he happened to be outside of his truck when it was rear-ended a few years ago by a vehicle traveling at about 50 miles per hour.
Despite the dangers, he said, he loves his job as a line worker.
When he describes his current relationship with FairPoint, sometimes he sounds like a jilted lover — he is hurt, and dwells on how the relationship got to where it is.
“We like this job. We’re good at it,” he said. “But the company doesn’t seem to care.”
Frozen negotiations
On Dec. 12, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin called on the company to end the strike; on Wednesday, Sunu responded with a public letter that accused the union of failing to respond to the company’s efforts to bargain.
“You can’t argue by yourself,” said Angelynne Beaudry, a FairPoint spokeswoman, on Thursday.
Union leaders say FairPoint hasn’t budged from its initial position, first released in April, that the union accept roughly $700 million in concessions over the three-year contract term.
The union has offered more than $200 million in concessions, according to International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local business manager Mike Spillane.
But Beaudry says that the union hasn’t been willing to come to the negotiating table.
“They have not offered any meaningful counter-proposals,” she said.
Asked to clarify about what would constitute a “meaningful” counter, she said the statement was self-evident.
In an open letter to Vermont’s congressional delegation, Sunu said that the union’s two most recently submitted counter-proposals were more expensive to the company than their initial counter-proposal, submitted in August.
Allen said that wasn’t the case and said FairPoint is the one that needs to bring a new proposal to the table.
“The company wants us to take a complete loss,” he said.
Out of work
Allen says he’d like to get back to picking his way around dead raccoons and clutching to utility poles in the high wind, but these days, when he goes to a FairPoint job site, he’s on the outside, standing with a picket sign in his hand and watching as temporary replacement workers do the work.
A group of about 20 local representatives picket the sites, sometimes in small groups of three or four. Allen says they make sure the contingency workers hear the message.
“We’re union,” he tells them. “You’re doing my job. Go home. We don’t want you here.”
When he’s not picketing, Allen fills his time in other ways.
He was in a crowd of about 200 that gathered at the Statehouse in Montpelier last month for a rally. Allen says he spends about 20 hours a week on the picket line. The rest of his time is spent looking for work. He’s sending out about three resumes a week, but it isn’t going very well.
“When you start with a company right out of high school, you don’t have a college degree,” he said. “Not many companies will even look at you if you haven’t graduated college.”
The fact that he’s involved in the strike makes him a less attractive candidate, he said, because they know that, if and when the strike ends, there’s a good chance he’ll return to FairPoint.
At home, he’s tightening the household budget. He’s going without health insurance for the moment, and said he’s scaled back plans for Christmas presents for his four children.
“We’re cutting corners all the way around,” he said.
