Never thought I'd be pro union... but here I am.
- Oct 12, 2025
- 2 min read
I never thought I’d say this but we have no choice but to unionize here. Our wages, our benefits, our voices and our jobs are all guaranteed to get eliminated and this is not an exaggeration. I will lay out the case:
A year ago during a Teams meeting our NS VP actually said “I’ve been over paying you and I’m not going to continue to do that.” When questioned on this issue he brought up this ‘third party research’ that compared our wages to our NS ‘peers’- which included electricians for companies like Delta, and AES, mechanics for companies like Doyon, Nabors, and Colville, and contract operators like fairweather, and AES (our DSMs). In otherwords they compared the wages of 20-year company electricians and operators to our helpers with 3-4 years of experience and he intends to get our pay “mid range” with “our peers”. He said this a year ago after they messed with our vacation and paychecks, and now they are doing it.
The removal of premiums and lead positions is only the first step.
Newer employees, who are not yet a step 5, will never be able to match our pay- the ‘pay for performance’ grades they will have to pass through will routinely place their pay at only 75-80% of what the full ‘step’ pay was. Meaning when they’ve finally reached their ‘maxed out’ pay they will never equal the current step 5 pay, 60-75% is more realistic.
This new pay progression doesn’t only affect them- this affects current step 5s as well. How? You now have a giant target on your back. In 3-5 years, when the newer guys have ‘maxed out’, YOU will be the ‘most expensive’ O&M Tech. Who are they going to lay off next? The guy they’re paying $71 an hour or the guy they're paying $49 an hour? I’ll say it again- in 3-5 years the new payscale will result in a ‘hit list’ of current Step 5 O&M techs. In our VP’s own words “why should I pay more for a service than I have to?”
If we don’t unionize, and stabilize our pay they will whittle it away and weed out everyone they consider overpaid.
I’ve never thought about your last comment, but it’s entirely correct. Once the lower wage workforce has the knowledge passed on it just makes us that much more over paid.