In July of 2005 I was working as a Dispatcher in Plymouth. In my first 5 or 6 months I was amazed by the amount of time that was required of me to keep up with all that goes into being a representative for Local 369. When 6:00 PM or 8:00 PM would roll around and I would be headed for the door and President Sullivan would quite often grab me and say we have to go meet with this Senator or that Representative about some Legislation or election. I would ask, WHY? In time I learned the answer to that question. To have the impact you want for your members, to be taken seriously requires incredible effort both in time and in preparation. Without this effort we are at the mercy of the system.

NGRID

Because of the differences in supplying electricity to an island environment our members on Nantucket have some unusual peccadilloes in their contract language. The Nantucket contract book has gone through two drafts so far. We are proofing and clarifying the second draft and anticipate completion soon and a signing in April or May. I want to thank Ronnie Conway, the chief steward, and Donald Ryder, steward, for all their help with the Nantucket contract book proofing and editing.

In Malden, Local 369 has had to have six or seven meetings with management to try to make some progress on an overhead troubleshooter’s agreement. Malden has had a change of division manager through this process. The rule here has been constant vigilance. Thanks to our national representative, Bob Mahoney. Since getting involved he has got us through a few significant roadblocks. With another meeting coming up we should be able to get an agreement finalized. That depends on the company.

GAS — In the past six months there have been sweeping changes in the New Bedford and Plymouth Gas service department. The company has implemented a mobile dispatch system called ADVANTEX. Since March we have had several meetings before we were able to reach an agreement that was workable.

Local 369, in preparation for a contract with National Grid, started as soon as Local 654 voted to merge with Local 369. Members from National Grid were immediately introduced to our Strategic Plan and all that is entailed with preparing for contract negotiations. I want to commend the members from National Grid and their leadership for so willingly and passionately embracing the Strategic Plan.

The Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Energy (DTE) in 2001 established
a Service Quality Plan (SQP) for the electric companies operating in Mass., National Grid (NGRID), NSTAR Electric and Gas Company (NSTAR), Fitchburg Gas and Electric Light Company (Unitil), and Western Massachusetts Electric Company (WMECO). This SQP was set up by the DTE to establish a guideline for the states electric companies to operate under in regards to quality of service.

The DTE has recently scheduled some “technical session” meetings with all Massachusetts electric companies [the above four mentioned] to review the SQP. These proceedings are to discuss the implementation of non-primary/secondary outage recording.

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