CABL Forum - Re: Something to consider

I was a tech with Bruister up until last year when I was fired along with some others for union organizing. We were not try to form a union to have anything handed too us on any kind of platter, not even a cold paper plate. We worked our butts off for what we made and were more than willing to do the job. Our company brought in company owned vehicles (COV's) claiming it was at the direction of DTV, which it may have been, but it wasn't so much the the introduction of the vehicle that upset everyone it was what came along with them. Along with the vehicles came a low hourly pay scale for those behind the wheel. Not finding many takers from the ranks of the piece rate personally owned vehicle drivers (POV's), the company brought in the Micky D's rejects at $10 per hour. Competion rates dropped, repeat service calls rates rose and turnover rates went through the roof. The POV techs weren't getting near the same number of installs they were prior to the introduction of the COV's, but they were getting two or three times the number of service calls, the majority of which were to correct poor installs done by the COV techs (which we lovingly referred to as the "f*ckin' new guys" or FNG's). By unionizing we didn't hope to gain anything we didn't already have, we were just hoping to prevent anything from getting worse and to set up a system (created by the techs) to make it easier to track and report poor workmanship so that we could get rid of the hacks. I reported a number of hack jobs I encountered while dojng service calls and nothing was ever done about them. For example I did at least six service calls in a one month period all on one techs jobs and all within two weeks of his original visit. This tech was not one of the FNG's but one who had been in the business for a while. The issues with his installs were stupid things like putting a 3x4 multiswitch on a Phase III triplesat dish, not running a second line for DVR upgrades or installs, not running phoneline for DVR or properly activating DVR service, not grounding the system, not properly bolting down the dish, etc. I reported each of these issues to the lead tech and later the office manager, neither of which did anything to correct the problem. I don't know if that tech is still there but I do know he was when I left and one of my last jobs was a service call on one of his jobs.
In another case, there was a tech hired the same day I was whose hack work was overlooked for a year and a half because he was either dating the site manager or the girl who did the routing. And after he was finally fired he got a contract through another install company, gained access to our companies scheduling system (using his router girlfriend password) and stole jobs that had been assigned to our company and routed to our techs. But the thing is the company knew the quality of his work was substandard and overlooked it for a year and a half just because of who he was banging. This guy was getting nothing but three & four outlet installs while other techs were having to fix his screw ups at service call rates.
So going to the boss with to report a hack did not work at Bruister. Would a union have helped put a stop to that? I can't say as we never got the chance to find out, maybe they will know the answer to that question very soon.

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Re: Something to consider