Sunday, January 31, 2021
I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year.
This month we celebrate the life of Doctor Martin Luther King Jr on the third Monday in January for his birthday 01/15/1929. He is arguably the most important voice of the civil rights movement. Doctor King led the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination on April 4th, 1968. He believed in nonviolent civil disobedience and never got tired of fighting the injustices. Doctor King was the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner at 35 years old at that time in 1963. I believe after what we see going on in our country today, we could use some advice from him. "The time is always right to do what is right."
We are not in a much better place with COVID in 2021 than we were in 2020. So, going forward we need to continue to wear our PPE and social distance. Please make sure you’re doing your daily prescreen call in. Do not come into work if you feel sick, too often this happens and you are affecting others and forcing quarantines on them and risking their health and the health of their families.
We tried to get to as many Day of Reflection meetings as was possible. I believe there were good conversations and I know that Local 97 and its membership believe in safety. Communication is one of the keys to working safely and it starts with a good tailboard. The tailboard is key to everyone being on the same page and an opportunity to teach and train those in progression. Do not take shortcuts and do not put pressure on yourself or crew members to get the job done. At National Grid we deal in outages and restore people's power every day. Outages may seem like an emergency to the customer but for us, it is just part of a normal workday. I have been to many meetings where members had good intentions but took a shortcut and they had an accident. You do not get a pass, you get disciplined for good intentions. Make sure you understand the task at hand. If you are unsure about the task at hand stop (safety stop) and pause the job until it is safe to go forward. Make sure if needed you get the safety advocate, Local 97, or management involved when needed. The work we do is unforgiving you may not get a second chance. Please remember to work safely for yourself, your coworkers, and your family.
Respectfully,
Jim Murty
IBEW Local 97
Assistant Business Manager West
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