what a great opportunity to open tree-trimming schools for all the under-employed valley residents
5
"cast a wide net to find qualified workers, with entry-level wages starting at $15 an hour..."
And PG&E and its contractors wonder why there's a shortage of tree-trimmers.
Do the math: given that trimming is seasonal, at best, say, a 9-month a year job. 9 x 20 x 8 x 15 = a whopping annual income of... (wait for it) $21,600 (before Social Security, Medicare, and taxes).
Union jobs, the article says, pay $28 an hour... all the way up to $40,320. That's reprehensibly low pay for a highly-skilled and dangerous job.
In contrast, look at PG&E's new CEO: "the utility’s incoming chief executive officer Bill Johnson will receive an annual base salary of $2.5 million for a three-year contract..." as well as "a one-time transition payment of $3 million on his first day on the job, as well as an annual equity award of about $3.5 million..."
Anything wrong with this picture, folks?
47
A very good story that captures much of the intricacies of successful trimming trees near power lines.
But one area that I found lacking in this story is the issue of quality. The term lacking is "arborist". The ability to make good decisions on tree removal (and care) depends on certified arborists.
One such association, very germane to this article, is the Utility Arborist Association. There are many others.
These individuals have the years of experience, the training, the knowledge and skills to do or supervise tree trimming that is correct and meets the goals established.
There are two ways to trim a tree 12 feet from a utility line: just cut off anything within 12 feet - or - trim the tree such that it is the 12 feet minimum from the lines and will continue to be so for many years into the future. Often trimming can cause a tree to grow even more quickly.
I've years of experience in tree trimming and have a relative that owned a tree company for decades. He is an arborist.
Let me assure you that perhaps 60% of the residential tree trimming in our area is done by what I would term butchery. Tree whackers.
It's good to hire more people who can trim trees away from power lines, but without on-site arborist supervision that effort is effectively meaningless.
19
And the work does not come cheap for homeowners. My neighbors and I have all paid thousands to keep the redwoods trimmed around our homes. One particularly difficult job cost $5,000 for just one redwood.
9
pge is supposed to pay for this
2
Tyler should ask for a raise.
9
It's so short sighted to continue to put transmission lines on poles when the money spent to trim trees and fight massive wildfires would be better put to use putting transmission lines under ground. Of course only in America do we prefer to spend billions of dollars to fight fires rather than place lines under ground. pennywise and pound foolish!
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@DrewCHuge cost to put underground and most govts are broke today,due to all the social spending.
1
pg and e is NOT broke!
6
Most of the tree trimmers I know in South Florida don’t speak English. Maybe we need some H1B’s.
6
My son makes his living climbing and cutting trees. He lives in another state. He risks his life every day but he loves it. $15 an hour for entry level workers is an insult to any worker doing something so necessary and so dangerous that others cannot or will not do it. The pay pyramid should be inverted and that $15 even exists as a starting wage where market forces demand more is incredible. A common man/woman with common sense could run a hedge fund. I doubt that hedge fund managers could climb and cut down a tree. Pay your workers a decent wage and provide them with the benefits their labor demands and they will come. For this stupidity alone PG&E should be slapped.
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@JoeS If $15 doesn't provide enough workers,then they can raise the rate.That's how free enterprise works.
6
Why does nobody talk about the real, underlying issue: in all advanced European countries powerlines are underground! Let's at least make this a requirement for all new developments. Of course, this idea will meet resistance from the short-term profit thinking that runs this country. It's time to take a longer vision and plan for a multi-generational time frame.
27
It's an economic gradient. Pay attractive wages and workers will come which will be reflected in monthly power bills. As CD in Marin stated, tree trimmers often meet hostility or worse when they do their work. California's omniscient legislators need confront more that the boogeyman PG&E.
6
Here’s another little known, absolutely true problem going back years: PGE tree trimmers frequently get met with serious resistance—as in with firearms—in certain parts of Napa, Mendocino, Humbolt, etc. counties when trying to do their jobs. When they get chased off of or near private private property by angry home owners, ranchers, or pot growers with guns, they skip that area. Been happening for a long time.
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@CD
How often is "frequently"?
the pot-growing situation has changed a bit since you were in humboldt
2
$15 a hour, I cannot imagine why someone would not jump at the chance to get mangled for life or dead for such “ generous” wages.
The power company continually upgrades poles, how about refusing the permits for pole replacement, forcing them to bury the lines?
In St Croix USVI virtually every power pole was destroyed by hurricane Hugo, instead of burying the lines the elected to put up new poles which get taken out by every hurricane. I have friends down there that were without power for months after Irma and Maria. Several months in houses that rely on electricity for everything, including water because water is supplied by cisterns. Is the wood pole corporation really that big of a political lobbyist?
32
@Paulie, burying the lines in dangerous areas is the only sane solution, but it is expensive, and PG&E has repeatedly shown that it is primarily interested in making payments to stockholders. Instead of finding ways to do necessary work,they now are crying that finding people to do the deadly dangerous tree work is not possible for the minimum wage they want to pay. I assume they want more immigrants so they can continue to pay low wages. How about some of the free marketers weighing in about supply and demand? Or does the free market only apply to companies, not to people?
21
Tree trimming is incredibly dangerous. You can fall, get hit by branches, get injured by chainsaws or get electrocuted, as happened to a young California man whose death is detailed about three quarters down this article on workplace dangers, http://inthesetimes.com/features/workplace-deaths-wildfires-construction-sites.html
6
‘Utility Deregulation’ killed thousands of salaried employee skilled tree trimmer jobs. Now ‘Contractors’ scramble to find lower skilled persons willing to work high risk hard work part time jobs as tree trimmers.
13
I'll bet the house that there are thousands of qualified tree trimmers available just south of the border willing to work for a decent wage.
20
Maybe California can take some of our young men from New York City, who seem to have energy and agility (and time) enough to scamper over rooftops, along train tracks, and up the sides of buildings in their idiot pursuit of graffitiing every bit of wall they can find.
Surely we can channel such youthful zest into constructive endeavors. All they need is guidance and training.
Or at least, that's what everyone tells me.
8
not sure who you are denigrating in your comment. These tree trimmers put there lives at risk for 15-20 bucks an hour. Seems like it's time for the forest service or The California department of forestry to start using those tax dollars used to bail out PG&E and train a few thousand tree trimmers.
8
Would it be inhumane to have prisoners do the work? If so, why? They get three hots and a cot for doing nothing and each cost the government ~ $60k per year.
2
Would it be inhumane to make people who reside in Vermont to trim trees across the nation?
3
Gee, perhaps there are some Guatemalans or Hondurans who could do the job of tree trimming. They would probably be happy to work for the wages being offered.
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@Mary Ann
Guatemalans are known for their agility on rooftops and lack of fear of heights. They do a lot of roofing work.
The wages would be adequate. Plus assurance they would not be arrested and deported would be requisite.
4
I'll bet it's a job many immigrants would be happy to hold....
12
So, you want people to climb hundreds of feet off the ground, risk dying by falling, getting hit by big branches, electrocuted or cut by chainsaws for $15 an hour?? The barista that made my latte this morning makes that much and the worst thing she has to worry about is spilling hot coffee on herself.
This is the real problem with society. We all want the comforts that make our lives cushy and comfortable but we don't want to pay people for doing actual hard work that makes that possible.
71
The choice.
Tree trimming, and get paid for actually doing something...
Or Gender Studies so I am told that people need to learn to respect my feelings....
And people who are incapable of working got for choice two every time. No wonder there are shortages of skilled labor.
8
I know a tree trimmer in Pasadena who makes ~$15/hr, but he's paid in cash most of the time and he can choose to not do the work or to do it differently.
I did much the same after college in santa barbara and made roughly the same wage, and again, mostly in cash plus that was several decades ago.
Later I worked as a scuba diver off the coast and islands and tree work was definitely more dangerous plus as an self employed diver I grossed more than ten times the amount offered as a tree worker. And I chose when and where I would work.
Tree trimming is one of the most dangerous jobs there is.
20
Start at $15, pay up to $28 per hour?! For a job you need to be in great shape, highly skilled, and has a high death rate? There’s the problem. The high end should be the starting pay & the top end should be over $50.
Did I mention if it’s not done billions of dollars are burned to the ground?
67
Money resources are not a problem, or so they say. But people resources are lacking. So pay more money.
That's the way it works.
33
The headline of this article is misleading and a joke. "Finding tree trimmers is a problem" it says. Then you read the article and it casually mentions that the work is dangerous, even deadly, and pays minimum wage. The headline should read, "Very few willing to do dangerous tree-trimming work for minimum wage". The free market works by signals that have to be reflected in prices. When stores can't unload their inventory, they mark it down. When employers can't find enough workers, they need to raise the wage. They can find a wage that they'll have lines at the door applying for the job. If you're not willing to pay enough to attract workers -- stop whining. It boils down to "There are no jobs at all that American's won't do, only wages that Americans won't accept"
67
Underground electric wires don't spark fires.
34
What a pity that so many healthy trees are either cut down or butchered for this. In Illinois, power companies are trying different methods to better insulate and more tightly group the feeder wires, so they better handle any contact with trees, and don't require such a large area of the tree to be removed. It just comes down to money, like everything else. We need to put a higher value on healthy mature trees, if we want to keep this planet livable.
29
@Fred Rodgers
@Peter Orth
If you lost a home with family pictures, furniture, clothes et al, as we did in Paradise, you might have a different point of view. The morning the fire which burned a whole town started, PG&E was working on the lines on the road leading to our home. I was at my computer; one warning: Evacuate Now. I grabbed some clothes; my daughter grabbed two cats and put them into carriers, one cat hid under the house, probably gone within seconds from the smoke. Our friend loaded book boxes into his truck, (we had started to pack for a move to Sebastopol). We learned one lesson from dealing with an insurer: Take pictures of every single thing in your house. No arguments about antiques, etc. One rocking chair traveled from NE; it was an family antique from England, simple and elegant. Irreplaceable.
16
All across this country people are going to have to make better/ safer choices on where to live and have a home. Developers don't care if your property floods or burns down once they get paid. We can't continue to place communities in the wild areas, and we need to start moving the ones already there, or Mother Earth will do it for us. I lived in a flood plain for 30 years hoping they would flood proof our neighborhood of 40 homes, and finally they did the right thing, they bought us out, and returned the area to the river. It was heartbreaking to leave, but the smart move.
34
I have no problem with trimming trees for safety, and I live at risk of fire as well, so I empathize. I am merely pointing out the sloppy low-cost way the task is being approached - unskilled guys with chain saws and a bucket truck destroying trees is not the same as trimming them.
10
Southern California Edison has been hiring crews that are butchering trees in residential neighborhoods in their coverage area for the same reason. These are definitely not arborists, and the rampant topping of 100 year old trees is an aesthetic disaster. They should consider adding insulation or undergrounding the lines. https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2019/02/02/altadena-residents-say-edison-is-too-prune-happy-with-area-trees/
17
@Peter Orth
CT did put lines underground after a series of bad storms. That didn't help with old tree branches falling across roads, blocking traffic to I95 for a lot of people. Westport had an active Save the Trees community; assume they were mostly retired people. We also had a large deer population; it was not unusual to have a deer suddenly appear in the road stopping all traffic. We also had an active Save the Deer community. We begged the Park Service to do something; they tried relocating deer to other areas where the locals didn't want them either. I cannot count the hours stopped on one road, driving back trying access to a different road, bumper to bumper. My CT employer had been in business since 1914 and was very understanding.
1
@Peter Orth
Underground power lines will pretty much have to follow their existing routes. Those 100 year old trees are not going to do well either when their root structure gets disturbed by the trenches needed to bury those lines.
5