July 2024

Greetings everyone,

Summer is upon us and the heat, smoke and fires have already started. I wanted to remind everyone to be mindful of the heat and smoke and remember to stay hydrated and watch for signs of heat exhaustion, heat stroke. Be sure to not only be mindful of yourselves but your co-workers as well. Many times, the person that is experiencing systems does not recognize the symptoms themselves.

At PP&L we have continued work on simplifying entry into the Apprentice Qualified and apprenticeship pathways. We have had several meetings with our subcommittee and are coming close to the final draft for craft entry. We hope to have this completed in the first several weeks of July.

We are also finishing final review of the contract revisions. Once completed, we will be getting the new CBA books made and make sure ample copies are delivered to all yards.

At the beginning of June, I attended the PEET meeting with our other labor delegates over in Bend. As you could guess, the majority of the training and discussion was around fire mitigation, procedures for when relays trip during different levels of fire danger and warning, as well as the new tools and tutorials the company is using with regard to procedures for re-energization after a fire near a line. I appreciated being able to have conversations with our members that attended regarding how all these new procedures are being rolled out and seeing first hand the training the company is implementing.

In the hall we also held interviews for our Administrative Assistant position. I am happy to say we have now also hired our new Administrative Assistant. Our new employee is Yvonne Tauriainen. We are still in the process of deciding on contract assignments, but she will be a great asset to our team. She comes to us after spending roughly 14 years at Asante with strong work experience in customer service. She will start full time with us on July 1, 2024.

Also, this month was our annual IBEW picnic and fundraising raffle for the Jim McClean Memorial Brotherhood Fund. It was great to see so many members attend from so many different employers. We had a great mix of PP&L employees from several different yards, Tree Trimmers, Wiremen, and Outside Line. We did not take an official head count but I would guess we had close to 200 in attendance at the picnic and at least 50+ people that camped with us over the weekend. This was one of our best picnics yet, and I hope next year will be even better!

To close, I know we speak about it a lot every month, but we do have our Unit Officer, Shop Steward and Unit Conference coming up on September 5^th, 6^th and 7^th. If you are interested in being a shop steward or unit officer, or perhaps you are just curious about what those roles entail and would like to learn more, please reach out to the hall and get signed up!

Respectfully,

Nick Carpenter

IBEW 659 Business Manager

nick@ibew659.org

541-227-9736