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Hello all,

By the way, I have my Blog Cast live on iTunes now. Subscribe if you dare!

Let me ask you something, does your customer really care about you? I see that the safety initiatives are all led by the carriers, NATE, and the tower companies. Hey climbers and engineers, are you represented? I’m sure you are by the contractors out there that tell you the project needs to be done yesterday. So they have created the stand down week and the new NATE site, http://natehome.com/100-tie-off-24-7 to encourage 100% tie off campaign. That will raise awareness in most of the industry. What about the people who don’t know what you do? Well, it’s up to you as a group to raise awareness. Let’s see if this works.

Let’s make people aware, when go to a carrier’s store, ask them what their company is doing to promote tower climber safety? (Verizon Wireless, AT&T Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile to start with) Do you think that most device sales people know that you risk your life to make sure that they can text their friends? Now is that time! Let them know that you play a key role in the industry. Send an email to the carriers, get the email from your bill or their website, and ask them what they, the carrier, are doing to ensure that you are safe! It’s a simple question. Better yet, ask your family and friends send an email to ask the carriers what they are doing to make sure that the people they love are safe! It’s a team effort to ensure that the world knows about the climbers and engineers that work out at the tower sites! The carriers are very influential in this industry. They spend a lot of money on lobbyists to make sure that deployments go smoothly. Let’s make sure that they know that the worker needs their support. PCIA made announcements how they were working with the governments to ensure a smooth wireless roll out by overriding additional permitting.

Broadcast workers should be doing all that they can to be sure that you are safe. The TV and radio people should all know the stations that they work for are doing all that they can to ensure climber safety! Reach out to your favorite show, by phone or by email and ask them what they are doing! Trust me, most people in broadcast have a great deal of respect for you when they know what you do. 

Do you do government work? Well, are they making sure all of the climbers are properly trained and have all of the safety gear that is needed to do the job safely? Don’t call any governments, they probably have no idea about anything outside of their office. However, you could look up your congressman, but unless it’s an election year they may or may not answer you. It takes big numbers to get their attention. If congress or the house interests you then go here and here . For the president you can go here but I think he has bigger things to worry about. Now OSHA can be reached here. OSHA is who should be looking after the worker, so they would be the best contact if there is an incident. OSHA is there to help, they would be the ones I would call on for help and they are taking an interest in climbing in the USA. However, only reach out to them if you see a problem. I do think that regulation of the climbing industry will be coming. Look at all of the accidents out there. Not just the ones we heard about but the ones that are not reported. There are many. I would like to think that OSHA, EPA, and the FCC are doing all that they to make sure that people are safe. One of the problems in the USA is that crossing departments causes more problems. I think that they could learn from police task forces. I talked with several drug enforcement agencies that pulled in resources from the state police, local police, the FBI, the Coast Guard, and army so that they could work together to catch the bad guys. I am hoping that OSHA and the EPA and the FCC would create, if they didn’t already, a coalition to make sure that workers that are exposed to RF and tower dangers would be represented properly. I plan to release a post with more information soon.

Let me know what you are doing with this article! Something or nothing, email to the carriers? What?!? Let me know!

OK, I have 2 books, Worker’s Aid and An Introduction to Tower Climbing.