Michigan Utility Workers gone east for Hurricane Sandy garners resentment.

[Gistok]

Fist of all this is not a union versus non-union issue, since all involved were union people...

But when I got my new gas meter installed yesterday, I was talking with the 39 year old installer, a unionized Consumers Energy worker.

He mentioned that weeks before he had been in Long Island New York [[working 16 hour days for 2 weeks) helping out with the cleanup caused by the devastation of Hurricane Sandy... by fixing, installing and turning on gas meters up and down the hard hit coastline.

He had the unfortunate experience of finding 3 dead bodies in some of the houses he was restoring service to [[2 died likely of carbon monoxide, one found drowned in water in a bad state of preservation).

Anyway Consumers sent among the first crews that were on the scene, with many other utilities across the country sending crews out [[including Detroit Edison) a little later.

But [[besides the finding of bodies), the thing that disturbed the installer the most about his 2 weeks stint out there, was that they were made to feel like scabs from fellow unionized utility workers of National Grid... the Long Island gas utility.

He said that the work for those guys will take months and months of overtime for all residential customers to get back their gas/electric service, and yet those National Grid workers were complaining anyway that these guest workers were taking their extra overtime pay away.

Appalling... just appalling...

[Hermod]

But [[besides the finding of bodies), the thing that disturbed the installer the most about his 2 weeks stint out there, was that they were made to feel like scabs from fellow unionized utility workers of National Grid... the Long Island gas utility.

He said that the work for those guys will take months and months of overtime for all residential customers to get back their gas/electric service, and yet those National Grid workers were complaining anyway that these guest workers were taking their extra overtime pay away.

Appalling... just appalling...

Typical, screw the customers so long as we get ours.