Reply to post: Amateurs

Amateurs

I once worked at an electric utility in a certain Caribbean country. The linemen in Transmission and Special Services, based in the Orange Street office downtown, were well known to be particularly bolshie, and to be effectively unfireable, the supply of people willing to work with 24, 69, and 138 thousand volt high tension lines being quite limited. The then Managing Director was well known to be the asshole of assholes. There was a strike. The MD attempted to invoke the Essential Services Act, a piece of legislation that said that certain people could not strike. He threatened to have the government send in the army to ‘enforce discipline’. The government, being rather socialist, was somewhat surprised; the army, having a distinct shortage of personnel qualified to play with high tension lines, was not amused. The Orange Street boys were enraged. A group of them came up to company headquarters, using company bucket trucks, and blocked all but one exit from the parking lot. The MD attempted to depart, driving his then brand new and very expensive company car. The Orange Street boys literally picked the car up and turned it over onto it’s roof, engine still running, MD still inside, blocking the last exit. They then went back to their picket line on Orange Street. Shortly thereafter the strike ended, the company conceded everything, the MD departed, and not a damn thing happened to the Orange Street boys.

Don’t annoy bolshie linemen. They’re insane and irreplaceable and know it.

I wasn’t a member of the union, and so couldn’t strike, and was at System Control on Washington Street… watching through the security cameras and ‘advising’ System Control management, as I wasn’t licensed to switch while they were, but I knew the SCADA system while they didn’t, and the staff at System Control had, for the first time ever, joined the strike. Right after the MD threatened to send in the army. There was a shortage of soldiers who were licensed to switch and even fewer who knew the SCADA system. There was a reason why the strike was settled really fast once System Control walked out… Don’t annoy the only people who can turn off every light in the island.