Employers Need Wind Power Technicians 170
Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that Oklahoma is one state benefitting from the energy boom. With a wind power rush underway, companies are competing to secure the windiest spots, while breathing life into small towns. The problem is, each turbine requires regular maintenance during its 20-year lifespan, with a requirement of one turbine technician for every 10 turbines on the ground. So even with a job that can pay a good starting salary (for technicians with a GED or high school diploma who complete a four-week turbine maintenance training program), there aren't enough qualified technicians to do the work. 'It seems odd, with America's unemployment problem, to have a shortage of workers for a job that can pay in excess of $20 per hour. But being a turbine technician isn't easy,' says Logan Layden, adding that technicians typically have to climb 300 foot high towers to service the turbines. Oscar Briones is one of about a dozen students who recently finished a maintenance training program after leaving his job as a motorcycle mechanic and now has his pick of employers. 'So I was in the market to find something else to do, and this seemed pretty exciting. Being 300 feet in the air, that's pretty exciting in its self. So yeah, I'm a thrill seeker.'"
Oh please (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh please (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever done manual labor?
Climb up a 300' tower with tools?
I work in a manual labor industry. It's no joke. These guys and gals work hard, and it's not an easy job. The only time you see them is when it's sunny and nice, because that's when you're out walking your dog. How about when it's 31 degrees, freezing rain, and you're knee deep in freezing water? For an 8 hour shift? You're not out there because it's too miserable; you're at home under the blanket watching TV. They're out there working.
Try getting out there, and working at the top of even a 60' bucket truck, in high wind. Now try it at the top of a 300' tower, in freezing cold wind.
If these were union jobs, they'd be going for $40+. The $20/hour thing tells me they're not union.
Re:Oh please (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a question of the size of turbine. The bigger ones have work benches and everything in the _rooms_ at the top of the towers.
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I've never been up a wind turbine tower; I've been up inside water towers. Even out of the wind, you're surrounded by cold steel and it gets downright miserable even after a short while. It just sucks the heat out you.
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Umm... Clothing? Gloves?
Re:Oh please (Score:4, Informative)
Worse when some shit eating ass hat in an office decides it's a one person job. Even the smallest accident can be life threatening, when you have no one to help. Yeah, terrible Unions making sure enough people are employed to improve safety, that wages reflect effort and risk and age limitations. Those greedy evil unions they just don't appreciate a percentage of workers have to die every year to maintain higher corporate profits.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why should they raise the pay of workers when they can raise the payoffs to Congress to get them to vote in more overseas cheap labor ... and get a golf buddy at the same time. One stone, two birds, FTW!
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The $20/hour tells me their employers think they can offshore these jobs and are just making some whine so they can beg the government to let them import workers.
Pay $50/hr and they will come.
Re:Oh please (Score:5, Interesting)
I was at an open day at a wind turbine. They had a small cage lift that could take two people at a time to the top, it took a long time, and there were a few people in the queue. As a joke I asked the operator "Can I climb up the ladder? it will be quicker!". Instead of saying "No, don't be stupid!" he handed me a harness and said "Of course! Go ahead...". Not being one to turn down a challenge I put the harness on, cliped in, and headed up the ladder. It was hard work, and I was not carrying any tools. It was also a bit scary.
I'd take that job. The climb to work is good excercise, and the view from the top is amazing.
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They opened up a large farm of wind turbines about 40 miles east of my house. My brother-in-law helped build them. I'm thinking I'll look into this as a career change, since a) it's closer than my current job by 310 miles, and b) it's gotta beat sitting on my ass all day in front of a computer screen until I can go to the gym to get in a work-out. Doesn't hurt that there's a degree of "thrill" to it, as well.
That's a load of bullshit, sir. (Score:5, Informative)
You have no idea what you're talking about.
My grandfather, several great-uncles, and even a couple of my uncles were metalworkers who worked on building the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and many other large buildings in NYC and Chicago. They were white. The majority of the construction crews were white. If you don't believe me, look at any of the pictures of the construction workers building the damn skyscrapers, for crying out loud!
Yes, there were Mohawk metalworkers. My relatives spoke very highly of them and their skills. But they weren't hired because they were cheap labor. They were hired because they had a huge amount of experience building bridges. This valuable experience translated very well to building tall skyscrapers. The fact that they were Mohawk was of no concern. It was their knowledge, experience and abilities that mattered.
The racism your post exhibits is absurd. Your unrelenting hatred for white people is absurd. Your misrepresentation of the Mohawk metalworkers is absurd. If America has "lost its way", it's because people today actually believe the bullshit that you're spewing out all over the place.
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If I recall correctly, another reason why many construction workers were mohawks is that there is a distinct instinct in them that allowed them to work in high buildings on beams without problems - both lack of fear and an incredible sense of balance. This is pervasive throughout their society, so the easiest way to find someone who can do construction on a skyscraper was to hire out among the Mohawk tribes.
Re:That's a load of bullshit, sir. (Score:5, Funny)
Which do you think is more likely:
(a) Mohawks needed the work and took the dangerous jobs for the money, bringing in friends and relatives who also needed work (see: Irish cops) or
(b) Mohawks have a genetic mutation that makes them unafraid of heights, or
(c) Mohawks are comfortable with heights from their experience shape-shifting into animal forms
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I choose:
(c) Mohawks are comfortable with heights from their experience shape-shifting into animal forms
They probably would just shapeshift into birds and fly up there.
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I see what you did, there. Nice. Especially since not many are familiar with the Micmac tribe.
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As far as I can tell, you are both making it up. Can anyone cite something?
If America has "lost its way", it's because people today actually believe the bullshit that you're spewing out all over the place.
It strikes me that racism by the white majority has been the greatest problem in our nation's history. I don't think talking about it is the problem. Your response is the new political correctness: Mention racism and someone will be sure to try to shut you up.
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Not just Mohawks; many Senecas work on steel, as well. My father-in-law; a number of brothers-in-law; some of their cousins. It's a common thing in the Seneca world, too.
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Why would anyone working at a university want to downgrade to a $20/hour job? By capitalistic standards, they ARE "too good for it".
It's patently obvious they're superior to you. You're a blooming idiot.
Re:Oh please (Score:5, Insightful)
You need to turn your bullshit filter on ... what they say there is a lack of workers, what they mean is they don't really want to pay 20$ an hour.
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You need to turn your bullshit filter on ... what they say there is a lack of workers, what they mean is they don't really want to pay 20$ an hour.
If they don't want to pay $20/hr, then they should be saying there are too many workers. Because a shortage of labor means that the wages are too low and are under equilibrium.
Re:Oh please (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. $20 an hour is less then what trash collectors and janitors around here. $30 seems like it would be the starting point for this work.
Google around a bit and you'll find skilled ironworkers seem to average about $30. $20 is a bit too low for apprentices, there are some ultra low rate areas where $20 would be decent apprentice wage but "most areas" seem to pull just a little more, low twenties is about right.
Hmm. If I wanted to climb giant metal structures and get all sweaty, the free market wage for a generic iron worker is about $30/hr, or I could go in the green industry and starve my children on $20/hr. Golly I wonder which I would select?
Electricians get paid a little more than ironworkers, so entering the field in that direction doesn't work.
Its a very limited supply of workers... Not unskilled labor, takes years to figure out what you're doing. Its a young mans game (I'm too old, and I'm not that old...) and you need what by American standards is excellent physical fitness, and you need to not be a follower, because the followers all went to college and graduated with a diploma in multicultural studies, $100K in debt, and a coffee barrista job to pay it off, and you have to be at least median to above median smart to literally survive the job.
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$20/hr isn't bad pay in rural Oklahoma. Zillow yourself a nice house out there... it looks like $80K will buy a whole lot more house than I got (for $80K) when I was single and earning $37K/yr.
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because the followers all went to college and graduated with a diploma in multicultural studies, $100K in debt, and a coffee barrista job to pay it off, and you have to be at least median to above median smart to literally survive the job.
People with college degrees do tend to earn significantly more than people without them, and college is more valuable, IMHO, to teach you how to think than to teach specific skills. I find the people with multicultural studies degrees have better critical thinking skills than those who studied specific professions (e.g., engineering).
Also, your undergrad degree in engineering or business isn't going to take you far in those professions; you need a masters degree and professional experience.
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People with college degrees do tend to earn significantly more than people without them, and college is more valuable, IMHO, to teach you how to think than to teach specific skills. I find the people with multicultural studies degrees have better critical thinking skills than those who studied specific professions (e.g., engineering).
So you didn't know how to think before colllege? That 'teaching you how to think' stuff is just bullshit. University doesn't do that and it's not supposed to do that and outside of the U.S. no one even talks about it doing that. Outside of the U.S. people somehow learn how to think in grammar school. Perhaps one of the reasons we have so much trouble competing with other countries is due to the fact that we have this belief that thinking is something you learn in college. If I hadn't had to deal with so muc
Re:Oh please (Score:5, Insightful)
If heights is the reason for the lack of people then we have really lost our way. Reference the pictures of the guys building the Empire State Building, are they saying we couldn't get people to do that now?
The Empire State workers didn't go through modern public school's 12 years of "Rah rah rah! I'm great for no particular reason!"
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The reality here is either you have an industry that is too new and unorganized, a union that is putting a choke holds on the labor pool, or some other dumb ass bureaucratic reason that is making the country noncompetitive.
D. All of the above.
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Watch this and tell me that 20 bucks/hour is enough for working on those sort of structures. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A_h2AjJaMw [youtube.com]
Those are transmission towers. Structurally not the same at all. A lot of wind turbine towers, you climb up on the inside of them [youtube.com]. It's still demanding as hell, and a lot of work, but it's a little less freaky than the transmission towers.
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a union that is putting a choke holds on the labor pool
Please, tell us more...
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Do you understand the concept of liability insurance?
Insurance companies do not want people doing this kind of work and they will make it difficult for anyone to hire people to do it. The reason is that is high risk and it is going to be expensive for an insurance company. Partly because they are going to have to pay out to either a beneficiary or lawyers when someone gets hurt or killed - and it is an absolute certainty someone will be hurt or killed.
The problem isn't so much the worker but their family.
Sounds Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't climb the towers for our radio stations. I know a few maintenance engineers who do, but they're rare. Tower crews get thousands of dollars per day to do the climbing. Just to relamp our 350' towers at one of our stations costs about $750 per (and we have 5 of them).
So yeah, I can imagine that they're looking for people who will climb 300' towers for $20 an hour. Good luck with that. :)
The law of unintended consequences has a corollary: unintended *costs.*
Re: (Score:3)
Every now and again I see jobs advertised for tower climbers. And they typically state that don't even think about applying if you have never done it before. They must get a lot of people applying you think that climbing a tower is easy.
Re:Sounds Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Back when I climbed telephone poles for a living (and had the body that goes along with it), I regularly climbed towers for our amateur radio repeater network. Once you're in place and tied down, the work is actually fairly easy. But we had a lot of ground support (and ropes and pulleys) to do the heavy lifting. But the first time you go above 50 feet or so it gets a little unnerving.
Re:Sounds Good. (Score:5, Informative)
I regularly climbed towers for our amateur radio repeater network
Been there done that although I am more of a weak signal VHF operator.
Another issue is also the weather. Light breeze with two feet on the ground turns into OMG freaking hurricane 100 feet up. Both psychologically and meteorologically. Hams have the luxury of waiting for a perfectly calm day. The real tower workers earn their dough on the bad weather days.
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I knew an electrician who climbed poles to shut off power at the transformer. Well, he'd do that if he had to, most times he'd rather work on live 220V 100A service wires instead of climbing the pole, twice, to switch the breaker.
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I climbed towers a couple of times in my youth to carry out repeater work, rigging antennas and stringing cable. Highest was, as I recall about 400 feet up a 1000 foot mast. I didn't have any fear of falling since the pro rigger I was working showed me how to do it safely with a three-points attachment to my harness etc. As he explained if I fell I might hurt someone on the ground when I landed but I'd be already dead from hitting all the bits of the tower I would bounce off on the way down.
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Funny you mention that. My younger brother and I were in a tree, about 20' high, and he lost his grip, bounced off nearly every branch on the way down, and landed hard on the ground. Nothing broke, but he got a bit bashed around and dazed. I just remember looking down, watching him bounce off each branch like the Plinko game. Couldn't do shit for him once he started falling. He did learn to get a better grip when climbing.
Re:Sounds Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Every radio technician I know basically has his pick of locations to work. I was working in a much balmier area for the first part of my career, and when I was looking to make more money, I essentially was offered a job as soon as I could start in every city I called.
I picked the one that offered a good wage and appeared to treat their employees well.
But it can get pretty forbidding and most companies go through quite a few Junior guys before finding one that has the right mix of bravery, problem solving skill, and responsibility to be a good radio tech long term.
When you have to dress like this:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7196/6970622485_5ebeeba3e8_z.jpg
Or like this:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7047/6824493552_3f21a9e218_z.jpg
to climb up a 300 foot tower and work on something, you feel like you've earned the higher dollars you get paid.
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Re:Sounds Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
And here's the thing ... Jim, the guy who runs the tower company that we use, is always looking for experienced climbers. So, how long will it be before tower companies start raiding these $20 an hour guys, promising more money and better benefits? :)
These wind turbine people didn't think their fiendishly-clever plan all the way through. You ALWAYS factor the cost of maintenance into a business plan. ALWAYS.
It might actually have been cheaper to build the turbines so that the assembly could be raised and lowered for service. Would have cost more up front, but would have saved in the long run. Heck, ham operators have been doing that with their antennas for decades. :)
... and it looks something like this (Score:3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A_h2AjJaMw [youtube.com].
Also, it occurs to me that the guys who climb 300' towers should be paid just as much as the 2000' towers, since you're just as screwed in the event of a fall.
The 2000' tower fall would be much worse.... (Score:3)
...in that you have that much longer to think about what's coming.
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Oh for goodness sakes, they have HELMETS. Theyll be fine, quit exaggerating.
Re:Sounds Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Working my way through college in Kansas, I worked for the college as a student employee. One part of my job was to climb the towers for maintenance. We had several 50 footers, a couple hundred footers, and the main tower was 500 feet. I actually had a plane circle the tower below me one day while changing a light bulb.
As a student employee, I had very little skills or knowledge, and a bit of competition for any job. I got paid $7.50/hr wither I was sitting at a workbench or climbing a tower. God, I was so stupid. Carrying tools up was like weightlifting on a StairMaster with the chance that somebody would put a bullet in your head at any second. The tower had been there about 7 years, and most of the guys that had erected it were dead. There is an incredible mortality rate for tower workers. One of my friends was climbing when a chunk of ice fell and hit his hard hat, almost knocking him unconscious. There were so many dangers, it was literally "criminal" to put an uninformed kid on it. You could die from falling (blown off or a rung rust through underneath the paint), electrocution (you're on the tallest metallic structure for miles, and lightning strikes even in clear skies), and impacts (falling ice and broken metal parts or antennas).
Back in the early '90s the going rate for tower climbing was a buck a foot, and it would take a full hour to climb and descend the 500 footer. So $20/hr to go up, fix it, and climb down? Kiss my ass. I have skills and experience now, I don't have to risk my life for that insultingly small amount of money anymore.
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I don't have to risk my life for that insultingly small amount of money anymore.
Look up P.T. Barnum - famous quotes.
hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
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Isn't $20 an hour better than no job at all? Or is there some reason the electricians can't work for that amount?
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i think you may have skipped over the part that says union.
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Isn't $20 an hour better than no job at all? Or is there some reason the electricians can't work for that amount?
People like to say that your life and health are priceless, but as a group the wear and tear on the body and odds of not making it home alive have, as a group, determined its worth more than $20...
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Isn't $20 an hour better than no job at all? Or is there some reason the electricians can't work for that amount?
A good electrician can easily pull $65/hr around here. Some of them make upwards of $85/hr.
Unemployment insurance pays better.
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In Florida they make about $12 an hour.
An experienced maybe $15 an hour. Your wages reflected demand 2002-2006 when builders could not find enough qualified workers and these homes needed to be sold FAST while they WERE STILL HOTT.
Today, there are more electricians than jobs and these wages are gone forever. Even if another bubble starts there are more electricians now than demand so the builders can say take it or leave it.
This is deflation my friend. It happened in the 1930s and is a sign of a depression.
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Whatever you're smoking, please have the courtesy to share.
It's not a question of "socialists scuttling renewable energy". Actually, around here almost 80% of the electricity comes from renewable sources (that may change, they are building a couple of new nuclear reactors to meet peak demand). It's a question of people accepting underemployment.
And underemployment is worse for the economy than unemployment. Underemployment means that we spent money training you to a level higher than you're employed at (eve
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I disagree. Underemployment is better than no employment. It means some goods are produced and those that work under employed jobs are statistically more likely to get back to their skill level when the economy improves.
Is it is as good as not working what they once did? No, but it is better than nothing.
Every employer I met will not hire anyone out of work. You are unhirable and something must be wrong if you are out of work for more than a month. Recession? They do not care. They figured your skills are n
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Isn't $20 an hour better than no job at all? Or is there some reason the electricians can't work for that amount?
$20 an hour to climb up a potentially dangerous 300 foot tower? Yeah sounds like a great idea. The company that maintains the tower just doesn't want to shell out hazard pay. Instead they can bitch and moan about how "no Americans want to do the job, we have to bring in underpaid workers from 3rd world countries!"
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So you would rather have no job than take a pay cut? I agree that $20 per hour is not great, but why not take the lower paying job until you can find something better?
Re:hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Because if you do that, nothing better will come along. The rate for the jobs that come along will start to align with the lower rates.
This is what caused the unions to form to begin with. Large, dangerous industry like mining and manufacturing, paid enough for people to survive but not enough for them to ever prosper. It was a form of "voluntary" indentured servitude.
If everyone got together and demanded better conditions or raises, they would get fired and replaced with the never-ending line of people desperate just to survive. Only by striking and creating a picket line to actually shut down business would any real change ever get made.
For a modern example, see the stories on Foxcon and China. We in the West gape in horror at the working conditions and pittance for wages. But compared to the other options -- subsistence farming, etc. -- it is fantastic. If a worker doesn't toe the line, they're fired and replaced with any one of the teeming masses desperate to escape the crushing poverty they now live in.
Yes, it can go too far. See the auto industry and the various stories about Teacher's unions where people clock in, then punch out for a 5 hour lunch, etc.
But the whole "take the cut for now because something better will come along" doesn't scale.
Re:hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
But the whole "take the cut for now because something better will come along" doesn't scale.
Exactly. Once an employer knows that they can hire someone from a cheaper pool, they will happily lay off the well-paid workers and hire form the cheap pool. And along the way strip benefits.
It doesn't go the other way, though - employers won't raise wages as long as there's any hope of hiring from the cheap pool. That's why middle class wages have been stagnant for 20 years, while the wealthiest have seen their income skyrocket.
So yes, if you're qualified, hold out for the higher paying job if you can.
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Yes, this usually happens when the employees have been milking the companies. That's actually what is happening now. This is why people are willing to go to cheap labor. If your current work crew isn't performing well, you might as well hire out for cheaper. If your workers are good at what they do and work hard, then the employer won't hire to the cheap pool, because the cheap pool isn't equivalent.
Where I work, we sometimes bid a job for 4x what other firms bid it out for. But many companies still hi
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Middle class wages are stagnant because (a) middle class workers are slacking, and (b) the government is eating up any possible extra money, and (c) inflating the currency enough to make savings worthless.
A and B are factually incorrect. Productivity in the United States has been on a constant rise for the last 60 years. This would directly contradict A because it indicates more and more output is being produced by the workers.
The total tax rate on people is lower now than practically anytime in the last 50 years.
C is totally true, though. That an real inflation -- the cost of food, housing, energy, etc. -- has increased to keep pace with wage inflation. This makes it next to impossible to accept lower wages and actually keep your home/car. Unfortunately, with the housing market as is, moving isn't really much of an option. The housing crash has seriously curtailed the mobility of the workforce.
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Where I work, we sometimes bid a job for 4x what other firms bid it out for. But many companies still hire us. Why?
Because they give a damn about something other than the quarterly report. The other companies that won't hire you? They don't give a damn if it will cost more in the long run, they'll be gone by then.
I'm guessing the majority of your clients are small businesses that aren't beholden to shareholders and their "maximize profits at all costs" outlook.
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The towers could be safer, they could have interior stairs or even elevators. At some point, the extra hazard pay demanded by tower workers will begin to offset the cost of making safer towers. Also, stronger, safer towers will have a longer service lifetime. Balance will be found - $500/barrel oil will make safer towers cheaper still, by comparison.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what caused the unions to form to begin with. Large, dangerous industry like mining and manufacturing, paid enough for people to survive but not enough for them to ever prosper. It was a form of "voluntary" indentured servitude.
If everyone got together and demanded better conditions or raises, they would get fired and replaced with the never-ending line of people desperate just to survive. Only by striking and creating a picket line to actually shut down business would any real change ever get made.
It was more than that. Employers politically dominated the towns. Oppose them and nobody would do business with you, your bank would call in your mortgage, and you might have trouble with the sheriff. Employers also would beat up and kill people who opposed them, often with the help of state law enforcement. Unions not only provided negotiating power, but political power: Politicians who need union votes aren't going to send in the state militia to assault strikers, and will pass laws that take into account more interests than just the industrialists, such as child labor, worker safety, and overtime laws.
Unions are political organizations. They can be used for good or for ill, like the political power of the US Chamber of Commerce, but at least the working class can protect their interests.
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It is very possible that as soon as a union member takes a non-uninion job they are put on scab status and will never be able to work a union job again. If not officially then by convention.
It's just an average-paying job (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the average income in the US is $40000 per year, which is about $20 per hour. So, the job is only paying the national average. That's why it's not attracting people from out-of-state, even though the pay is above-average for the state of Oklahoma. See the statistics at http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-pci.htm [unm.edu].
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Does the first word in the phrase "starting salary" mean anything to you? I'm guessing a year or two of experience would likely help their earnings a fair bit versus someone fresh out of school.
Add that it mentions that the job "can pay in excess of $20 per hour," meaning that if the American average is $20 per hour the job can pay above the average American salary. Add in a presumably even lower cost of living in Oklahoma, and you're better off yet.
Well ... (Score:2)
Just reading the headline I initially assumed it to be a project to harness that hot air produced by all those MBAs.
Nursing shortage too (Score:2)
Maybe this is true, but the economy has been bad for years now, and I am sure that if there were sufficient job demand, enough people would retool. I hear that one big problem for returning vets is finding job. I think that if you were willing t
Re:Nursing shortage too (Score:4, Informative)
Speaking as someone who is in medicine but not a nurse, the issue is two fold. First, hospital administration is petrified of new graduates, so it doesn't matter if there's a million new grad rn's hospitals won't take a chance on them unless they're really, really desperate. Second, hospitals in their for profit wisdom (non-profits do this too) have decided to slash the pay offered to these experienced nurses to the point they've told these shit employers to pound sand.
See how it works? We won't pay you what you're worth (a good rn is worth more than a mediocre md) yet we won't hire the new generation so we can run around waving our hands in the air shouting "shortage shortage!"
People wonder why we're going to hell in a hand basket.
In my somewhat cynical oppinion (Score:3, Insightful)
All these "Industry X facing chronic shortage of qualified Y" stories can typically be translated to either:
"Profession Y is well paid, and we would like to drive down those wages by saturating the market with graduates"
"Profession Y is a niche / dying trade that we rely on, but running training schemes / apprenticeships hurts our quarterly returns"
In both cases Y tends to be industry specific engineers
Dirty Jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
Mike Rowe did an episode of Wind Farm technician. Fascinating show. And proved that I'd hate to do it. It wasn't the climbing the ladder, or standing on top of it that was the problem. The nacelles are only just big enough to fit the generator and leave enough room for a midget to crawl around and do the servicing.
The big laugh in that episode was one of the techs telling a story of a snake in the nacelle. Apparently it had crawled in there during construction when the nacelle was on the ground and then rode it all the way to the top.
I can't find a link to the actual video, but it was Season 3 episode 31, "Wind Farm Technician".
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Most on-site manual labor jobs suck no matter how you look at them. A lot of white collar jobs suck in a different way. Unless you're in the top 10% of any white collar field, your job most likely sucks, because all the really cool jobs have been taken by that 10%.
The key is most jobs suck because, hey, they're jobs. If they weren't they'd be hobbies, and you'd either love them or you'd go do something else.
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The key is most jobs suck because, hey, they're jobs.
I know jobs have their own suck factors. I'm sure being a jockey sucks in its own way, but I'm not physically suited to be a jockey.
Jumping the tech gun again (Score:2)
I'm still skeptical that large windmill-style wind generators are the best choice either from a TCO or side-effect point of view. Certainly if I were going to put something on my own land, I'd do same careful life-cycle studies as well as both audio and ground-vibration studies. I would like to see more about vertical turbines, which certainly have a smaller volume requirement and are supposedly much quieter.
4 week training? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm thinking these folks are underpaid & under trained.
I got more training that that as a newly hired first year apprentice with my power company, on top of my apprenticeship board required education. And I still had to work under direct supervision until I got my journeyman ticket.
Unless there's a lot more to it, they're likely not qualified, and you'll see the electrical and mechanical trades start a fuss over it.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm thinking these folks are underpaid & under trained.
Mod parent up, Insightful.
To climb a 300' tower and risk your life inside a small room with a spinning rotor holding more inertia than your entire body could handle, let alone a finger or hand (as is likely to get caught in it if anything does) is a massive amount of risk and work. $20/hour is disgusting for something that has no overhead aside from startup costs and maintenance - these guys are certainly underpaid, and the free market is a very simple thing when it comes to labor: if you can't attract the
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.nlc.bc.ca/programs/allprograms/windturbinemaintenancetechnician.aspx
That is in my town here in northern canada but there must be others as well.
more jobs need a training program. Not BA, MA, PHD (Score:2)
That is part of the unemployment problem as well. When you have schools turning out BA, MA, PHD with out the right skills but that same time you have people with out a BA or people with a AA from a tech or community college with alot more skills can't get a tech job do to the lack of BA's or higher.
Experience (Score:4, Informative)
I am a wind tech. I service and repair these towers. You either are in shape, or will be in shape soon climbing the towers. I climb up to 3 towers a day. The job is extremely cold (or hot, depending on the season), and the work is dangerous. I work directly with power magnitudes from 24DC to 1042DC, and 24AC 1phase up to 690v 3phase. I DO get more than $25 an hour, and most weeks I get about 65 hours. My training includes 2 years schooling, 4 weeks basic classroom tower training, 2 weeks advanced classroom diagnostics training, and 6 months supervised OJT training.
Despite the above, qualified technicians are difficult to find and hire. The companies that hire under-qualified persons (such as exampled in the article) are not worried about their turbine reliability, or their employees.
BTW, most turbine techs around my area get $15 an hour or less.
Re: (Score:2)
Where are most of these jobs relative to population centers? Part of the problem may be that there just aren't that many people who are already living out in the boondocks, or willing to relocate there who aren't already gainfully employed.
Good lord slashdot is out of touch (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't say they're out of touch. But the major if people on /. work in cities that pay much more. Hell, my first years mechanic apprenticeship paid $2.25/hr, this would be paid right up to my 3rd year. And in my 4th year I'd be at min. wage at the time or $6.85/hr. Of course I had to buy all my tools on a $2.25/hr salary too. Luckily now, the government will co-pay or give you an low interest loan via the banks for it. This is going back oh 15-16 years ago but the trade skills still don't pay
More than $20/hr? (Score:2)
Wow. What's that, $40k/year?
Why would you bother being a turbine jockey when you could be a tower jockey and get paid a hell of a lot more to fix radio antennas?
every single story like this is a lie (Score:3)
every time you hear about 'shortage in industry x', what it really means is that 'industry is trying to lower wages".
why would they want to lower wages? so that they can return more profit to their shareholders, which are big funds and investment banks. it has nothing, whatsoever, to do with a 'labor shortage'. remember the invisible hand of the market? it should take care of 'shortages' just fine. it is funny to see the capitalists decide that capitalistic theory is not 'good enough' for their profit margin, and they need to grease the wheels with massive media campaigns and PR initiatives.
Re: (Score:2)
remember the invisible hand of the market? it should take care of 'shortages' just fine
In fact, that's exactly what's going on here. Millions of people are out of work; why would a company hire the most expensive workers when there are plenty of people willing to work for less?
If the job is as bad as some are claiming the workers will soon find an easier $20/hour job to pay their bills and market forces will drive the pay rate up. That seems more fair than artificially restricting the workforce to a chosen few who make high wages and blocking other qualified workers from doing the job for l
Maybe not such a good choice? (Score:2)
I wonder about the long-term viability of such jobs.
Inasmuch as wind power is utterly dependent on subsidies that means the jobs are dependent on the political fortunes of the "green" lobby and the various parasitic, private sector entities that feed off their political power, the industry would disappear if the influence of the "green" lobby declines.
It doesn't happen every day but there are more then a few cases of industries, no longer viable or no longer viable in America, using political power to main
Re: (Score:2)
That's not even true. Fossil fuels receive much more subsidies in the form of socialized health costs, military expenditures, and inter-generational debt transfer.
Not true. My own equally made-up figures show that wind power costs a hundred trazillion dollars a year.
Re: (Score:2)
My own equally made-up figures show that wind power costs a hundred trazillion dollars a year.
On the off-chance that you are not trolling... since I'm not interested in writing a dissertation, just go ahead and point out which of these assertions you disagree with:
Out of sight, out of mind (Score:2, Troll)
This is the dirty little secret of the wind industry everyone seems to ignore when talking about it as an energy source with little to no down sides. More people have been killed [wind-works.org] in the U.S. maintaining wind turbines (or climbing improperly secured maintenance ladders [wkyc.com]) than in its entire history of nuclear power generation. This despite nu
"one turbine technician for every 10 turbines " (Score:2)
Genius, they've invented Windows.
It looks like they need Linux (or BSD), with only one turbine technician per 100 turbines instead.
-- Terry
I call bullshit (Score:2)
The recession of the late 2000's caused a record number of US citizens to go back to school to get more education/training. Now we still have ~20 million unemployed people looking for work and companies are still complaining about a lack of skilled labor?
There are two explanations:
1 - The companies are full of shit
2 - Our education system is failing us horribly and not properly educating/training our workforce.
Re:Oscar? (Score:4, Insightful)
I kinda envy these new maintenance people.
Re:Oscar? (Score:4, Insightful)
Might as well buy a lottery ticket. Most of the really keen folks who would come up with the next new widget and make a million dollars are already making their mark in other fields. Somewhere they're a smart kid out of work that will take a chance on this job, and come up with something cool. He's one in a thousand. Actually there are a hundred of him out there, in fact. And one of those hundred will make it to the American Dream stage. The other ninety-nine thousand will trudge through with $40k a year until the find another job or retire.
Capitalism is depressing if you're not both innovative AND lucky. But it beats never having a chance at all.
Re: (Score:2)
"but I'd not leave my current $120K+ job in a city"
See, that's not who they're looking for. If you're making $60/hr and have a job, you're not really the ideal candidate. There are something like 15 million workers in the US who currently have near-zero income. Of those 15 million, apparently none of them are interested in this as a job, despite wages which are $20/hr more than they are currently getting paid.
I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of those people could not, for one reason or another, do this job. T
Re: (Score:2)
...that still leaves 30,000 people. And yet the candidate pool doesn't even appear to be that deep.
They're the dotcom workers of the 2010s and they know it and they're not playing along.
For better or worse you're only as good as the last job on your resume... and if that is a dead industry then its soylent green time for you. On the other hand, if the last job on your resume is "real", lets say "Car Mechanic" or "Carpenter", although you're momentarily unemployed, the odds of being hired in the future are pretty good.
Would I go into a bubbly industry knowing it'll only last a couple years and then I'll
Re: (Score:2)
Bear in mind where you're talking about relocating to. I've written about this before [blogspot.com]. The big wind farms like these are going up on the Great Plains which have been in a depopulating spiral for decades. Groceries may be 25 miles from where you live. The nearest health care may be 50 miles away, and the nearest specialist in a particular field you need 100 miles. The school systems and other public services are collapsing. Or alternatively, yo
Re:Move for a $40K/yr job? (Score:4, Informative)
"For the large majority of the unemployed, who haven't grown up there, it looks like tossing most of your life away for $20/hour."
I live in the same region. It is tossing your life away for $20/hour. Actually it's about $15/hour or less after taxes.
It doesn't matter if it's cheap to live here since it won't stay cheap for long after the people move in(been through this) and $20/hour is still utter garbage for high-risk work. Out here services suck, social support is a joke, and competitive income doesn't exist. I'll just throw in the view of hundreds of miles of flat nothing along with tornado hell doesn't ring well for people's positive outlook.
Let's not forget the high cost of just moving here and adjusting to all that nothing and other social losses which isn't figured into the initial first year and not compensated for. The initial pay is for the financially desperate who physically qualify and have a lot of crazy in them.
Re:Abandoned wind farms (Score:4, Interesting)
With the high number of abandoned wind farms I can't say I like the job security aspects of this. It might make a good summer job but I sure wouldn't plan a career around it.
Its also a capital intensive job. Back in the early 80s a cool blue collar "retraining" job was cable TV installer. The local vo-tech school had classes and graduated at least a hundred. Once all the hardline was strung up or buried, then.... From personal knowledge there are only about two dozen techs in that field in my area. What happened to the hundred or so other grads? Probably getting career advice to go into the (currently) lucrative windmill business. Endless bubble chasing, thats all the US has to offer anymore.
Retraining is a profitable industry all by itself. Much like the gold rush gold miners never made much money, but the general store types made fat stacks of cash, the place to make money in the windmill industry is in windmill industry training classes, not in windmills themselves.
Re: (Score:3)
? Abandoned wind farms?
You'll need to cite some references for this.
Since the main cost of wind farms is the initial capital cost and not the very small annual maintenance cost, it would make no sense to abandon a wind farm once it was running. It's literally free electricity after installation.
Re: (Score:2)
The cost of living is completely different than Denver.