In their on-going collective bargaining negotiations with the City of Ellensburg, a crew of six unionized linemen with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 77 claims the city is using COVID-19 as an excuse to avoid offering fair wages.

In turn, they claim this is an attempt to push them to leave their positions so the city can replace them with outside contractors.

The two sides have been negotiating since August of last year. They will receive mediation from the Washington State Public Regulatory Commission (PERC) in March.

According to Brian Gray, the crew’s union representative with the IBEW, after being at loggerheads for months on a new contract he made a tentative agreement with the city in December, but the crew voted overwhelmingly to reject it. This brought the sides back to the bargaining table.

“That [rejection] was intended to send the message back to the city saying, ‘Hey, what you’re offering is unacceptable,” Gray said. “A tentative agreement at the table doesn’t mean it’s endorsed by the membership.”

Gray said the crew wants a contract in the same ballpark as neighboring utilities in central Washington counties like Chelan, Grant, Benton and Franklin. But he said the city is asking them to take less.

“The strategy of the City of Ellensburg is pretty dismissive of those guys,” Gray said. “Their demands are not even industry standard. There’s nobody going backward in wages, and that’s exactly what the city is asking these guys to do.”

In a Facebook post on Feb. 10, the city said the economic impact of COVID-19 has played a role in its negotiations.

It stated, “the city is, as it must be, mindful that commitments it makes at the bargaining table must be sustainable for the city and must take account of the city’s Covid-impacted finances.”

Also, in that post, the city maintained that it is bargaining in good faith with the workers. Ellensburg Mayor Bruce Tabb reiterated this position during a city council meeting on Feb. 16.

“The city is not seeking to break the union or force employees to leave,” Tabb said. “We have no intention whatsoever of using contractors to replace our union workforce.”

Family, friends and the IBEW have led a support campaign for the linemen through social media. Many of those people tuned into the Feb. 16 meeting over Zoom, enough to max out the meeting at 100 attendees.

Those who were kicked out or couldn’t get into the Zoom meeting flooded the YouTube live stream. According to the crew’s foreman Bryan Ring, when he checked the video the following day, there were over 800 views.

“We’ve built a really strong relationship with the community here,” journeyman lineman Tyler Carson said. “Everybody cares about us, and it’s pretty evident.”

The crew is comprised of four journeymen and two apprentice linemen. Together they make up the entire Ellensburg Light Department. 

According to the crew, their ratio of journeymen to apprentices isn’t safe and leads to poor working conditions.

“We don’t have the right amount of journeyman to give us the training that we need and signed up for,” second-step apprentice Avery Miller said.

Over Christmas, the crew said there was an incident with a car hitting an electrical pole, but only one journeyman and an apprentice were available to tend to the damages. Without the manpower to make immediate repairs, the city had to bring in a contractor to do the work.

Ring said understaffing wasn’t as bad when he started with the city almost five years ago. The light department had nine employees. However, that changed when a new supervisor came into the fold and argued for reduced staffing.

According to Gray, a problem that has coincided with the crew’s reduced numbers is a recent high turnover rate with journeymen. A post on the Local 77’s Facebook page stated that nine line crew members quit working with the city in a three-and-a-half-year period.

With workers coming in and out of the department, Gray said this is where the ratio becomes especially unsafe. 

“They’re constantly having to relearn everybody’s abilities,” Gray said. “You work as a crew. You get to learn the deficiencies and the abilities of your crew person when working on energized power lines.”

Gray added that the electrical industry normally doesn’t have a lot of turnover, making the City of Ellensburg’s turnover rate alarming.

“You have to look deep to find out why,” Gray said.