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I had some feedback from my “Feedback on “Will the Tower Industry Police Itself?”

I wanted to get this out because this guy thought I deleted his feedback!

Comment: WHY DID YOU REMOVE MY POST……..

Response: I didn’t, here it is! I put his name in here because I think it’s funny, and I am pretty sure it’s not his real name!

Name: One of the few Intelligent ones
Comment: I will say this. YOU WILL NEVER POLICE THIS INDUSTRY. WHY……In most other industries you must have degrees, training, certs, etc. For example to be an engineer you need degree, certs, etc. To be a manager you need all plus more. See this is the only Industry I know where a person can have dropped out of High School, be working at a 7-eleven on Friday night and that following Monday be a tower climber installing high dollar equipment for major carriers. It is unbelievable.

What I mean is be careful what you ask for. This industry does not have professionals. There are some, but most rant and rave about being underpaid, so dangerous, etc but yet the industry is filled with drinking, pot smoking, not show up for work on time, rough necks who do not know a thing about being a professional. If they were to make qualification a determination for employment most would not make the cut. Urinalysis on a regular basis would weed out another chunk. Punctuality would probably get the rest. The professional powers to be known this and therefore it will never happen because 95% of the work force will not make the cut. You better not police the industry I should say.

Why is this industry so dangerous, I have climbed for over 20 years, had over 300 climbers under my supervision and no accidents or deaths. It is really quite simple. If your Physically tied to an object that is anchored in the ground, it’s physically impossible to fall. Pretty simple I think.

When climbers fall 100% of the time it is climber error. You never hear of equipment failing.

Response: Tell me how you really feel! First off, congratulations on training so many climbers, working with so many, and never losing any, thank you for that! I really mean it, great job! You are correct about most of this, you have those people but you also have some great people that think of this a profession, not a job. I often think of it as very skilled labor. However, I have also met many that fit the description you put in. You also make a great point about tie off, while not all the deaths last year were from tie off problems, there was also rigging failures, heart attacks, and tower collapsing. However, you are correct, there were many that obviously didn’t tie off. We need to drill into everyone’s head that if they don’t tie off they could die.

As for safety gear failures, there have been some this year but I don’t know if anyone’s safety lanyard failed, so you make a great point if you are referring to the safety lanyards!

Go to the IWCE conference and see me! For a discount enter code SPK! Remember that the communications people for public safety and fire departments will be there. Fire departments rescue climbers!

You want to learn about safety? Then listen to me at the “Tower Safety and Regulatory Compliance” panel on March 17^th, 2015

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Comment: After 25 years in the business, I still find that one of the biggest problems is drugs on and off the job sit. Another thing that causes us problems is NATE. NATE is like a lot of females. They love to keep something going all the time and I’m a firm believer if something isn’t broke, don’t fix it. My grandfather use to tell me, don’t stir in shit,, it will stink. If NATE would butt out and, leave OSHA alone, we would be better off. All of these company owner’s that claim they are a member of NATE and it is not nothing to be proud of. We have a safety guy in our company that is always talking about safety, safety, safety but, out of the other side of his mouth, he condones smoking pot in the company, on and off the job. It’s BS.

Response: OK, I take it you are not happy with NATE. I do know that NATE is working towards setting realistic safety training requirements in this industry. While they do serve the company owners, they are working to make the industry safer because this is the only way we will grow. Remember that no one wants a climber to get hurt. However, we have different views on how to prevent accidents.Prevention sounds easy, but it takes industry buy in and there are still so many climbers that do not tie off 100%!

OK everyone, this is a long comment, so be patient!

Comment: There are some interesting issues addressed in this forum that I agree with. There are no schools that can duplicate the effectiveness of OJT, however, schools can teach a lot of important points to a green hand. For example, I don’t think schools should teach that workers become totally reliant upon their PPG. I believe they should be taught to be as secure as possible on the tower, without any PPG at all, and the PPG should be considered secondary. Learning where to position yourself to avoid danger has proven to be as much of a deterrent as the PPG. I think a false sense of security is experienced when a worker wraps their lanyard or hooks their hook over a member. This is not a new argument. Years ago after an ironworker fell off the Verrazano Narrows bridge, American Bridge went on strike while pressing the general contractor to put nets under the areas they were working. Management claimed that a net would cause the men to feel a false sense of security and would result in more injuries because of carelessness. Eventually, after a short strike, the contractors capitulated and provided netting under the areas where bridge spans were being installed.
What puzzles me about all this schooling and training is, what are the credentials of the people doing the schooling and  training. Who is teaching the teachers? How many years of experience do they have actually climbing, setting iron, jumping poles, flagging cranes, using the basic tools or even tying knots. How many times have you teachers set up on top of a tower and actually endured the pain from harsh weather so you could finish a job and be home for Christmas? Few of you have ever experienced these circumstances.
The brains of the industry forget that this is a job. A job is where workers are given a task to perform and are paid to get it done in a safe and timely manner. If the works not done, nobody makes a dime. The workers that have the unique ability to get the work done safely need to be adequately compensated for what they contribute, and the “wanna-be’s”, the “professional resume writers and per-diem collectors” and the “PM brother-in-law contractors” need to be eliminated, and this is the job of the project managers and staffing people.
A crew will police itself only after they have worked together for some period of time, but it takes time. Moving boomers in from out-of-state on an “as needed” basis doesn’t give regular workers the time to learn what the boomers know or the tasks where they excel.

Response: Thank you sir, for the honest feedback. People often forget that if they don’t finish, they don’t get paid. If someone gets hurt or dies on a job, the company won’t get paid unless they finish. Most PMs and GCs won’t wait, they will bring another crew in to finish and not pay the first crew a dime. That doesn’t seem fair but that’ how it is. Ask anyone out there, this is the way the wireless business works. The GC can barely wait for OSHA to finish before they have a new crew on site to finish.

Training – I think the trainers play a key role in the process, but the experienced guys probably make more money working than training, just my opinion, unless they like going home every night, which is a huge factor after traveling for years. Most trainers are there to train the climber for a specific task, we rely on OJT training to teach them the job. That’s how invaluable getting trained on the job is, it is invaluable. When you are work with an experience crew you learn so much more than working with all people that never climbed before. However, those crews get pretty creative, but it leave so much to chance. Work experience becomes invaluable, if you are trained properly and know your job! It pays to learn what you can while you can. Learn as much as you can!

Be smart, be safe, pay attention to your task, following your plan but be ready to adapt, improvise, and overcome the obstacles in your way!

March 16th to 20th, 2015

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Create your plan and career path with some products for wireless deployment and the tower workers! Start with the Introduction to Tower Climbing, then get The Field Worker’s Aid for Tower Site Work, then to do the work you need to look at the Scope of Work Training, and finally the Tower Worker’s Logbook to log your high time and drive time and your project responsibilities, go to Learn more about my products! for more information!

Go to the IWCE conference and see me! I will be on the “Tower Safety and Regulatory Compliance” panel on March 17^th, 2015. Don’t you need an excuse to go to the Las Vegas convention center. I will share the stage with Cory Crenshaw, Charles Ryan, Dr. Denis Boulais, and Robert Johnson. Our moderator will be J. Sharpe Smith of AGL Magazine. Here is a list of exhibitors that will be there. I will be speaking and I may need some safety gear, email me at wade4wireless@gmail.com so we can talk! Make sure you sign up for this forum running 1:00PM to 4:30PM because let’s face it, these are issues you deal with on every job!If you want to talk after the conference, let me know.

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Comment: Thanks Wade, good commentary. You ask some very deep questions that never seem to be honestly answered. This industry has been “self-policing” for decades. All in all, the fatality rates have been dismal. I have been hearing for decades, “We will take care of ourselves, we are professionals, who would be better than us can make this industry safer?” Things have not changed at all!
Furthermore, look at some of the tower rescues done by emergency services. While many nitwits want to talk about how they would have rescued and fired the poor guys. You overlook the reason why those men got where they were in the first place. Because they were hired to climb and they know nothing about it. It’s not a joke! We buried a number of fathers and husbands last year, because they were put in situations they had NO EXPERIENCE IN!
Anyone you speak to in this industry will tell you how safe they are and how they stay tied off 100% of the time. If this were the case, we wouldn’t have buried 14 of our own this year.
You laid out some of the ugly truths of this industry Wade. Self-policing is code for, “You don’t need to check us out, you should check out the other fools”. Free-climbing is rampant. Nobody dares to admit it. As long as the speed of the work is the #1 goal, safety and workers rights will always fall to the back. Carriers escape any culpability through turfers and subcontractors. It’s all big business and big money. Little of which actually gets to the ones being pressured, to do the tasks safely.
The policing has to come from the climbers. They must be allowed and encouraged to say “no” to unsafe situations. Any company owner will say, “We always have our men’s backs.” That is until the PM tells you the site you are on needs to be completed today and on the air tomorrow. There is no other answer he will accept, other than “Yes sir!” Safety is not honored or rewarded.
How can we possibly train every worker in the field with real-time OJT, supervised over a period of years by climbers with proper experience and safety records?
Unions already do that, and have been doing this with excellent results. While we have companies, who throw men off the street to job sites without any leadership. This is why climbers die. Sadly, climbers don’t seem to have the stomach to change this either. Sad times indeed.

Response: Thanks! That is why I asked about a union for climbers. I haven’t had time to really follow through with that. I heard so many vast opinions about unions, it’s hard to determine which is from experience and which is perception. I just want to find a way to make the industry safer, efficient, and profitable. They all go together to be successful. No deaths and minimal injuries.

What are you missing? Listen to the Podcast, on iTunes, or Stitcher to find out!

Go to the IWCE conference and see me! I will be on the “Tower Safety and Regulatory Compliance” panel on March 17^th, 2015

Comment: Industry driven by carrier deadline. Stressful  environment on tower owner side to meet customer  demand. Push, deployment,  change in equipment,  push, re prioritization, conference call, chastisement, lost in the drudgery to get it done. Then an accident happens. The carrier, GC, and tower owner say. We do not know how this could have happened, but we need to change.
Cooperation and standardized  SOP is the change.  Tower owners and carriers need to cooperate on a standard of keeping the backbone of the industry  safe. For without the backbone the body has no posture and is weak.

Response:This is great feedback, these are all good points and if we could have cooperation and standard operating procedure (SOP) across the industry then we could really move ahead. We really need the climbers to work together and communicate.
Comment: I am in the industry 16+ years as a climber and foreman. Recently moved into PM position and in-house instructor. I have always felt that climbers should be a union. Mainly for the purpose of people being properly trained. It is something the industry always needed and still does.
I feel a lot of the deaths and injuries over the years have stemmed from no or improper training. Having a unionized training could only benefit this industry. The days of handing a harness and gear to a guy who was telemarketing last week, showing how to put a harness on and climbing up 150′ to swap 12 antennas in one day with him, while showing him how to choose a proper anchor point for his fall arrest lanyard would be gone.
That telemarketer could have received good training for a few weeks and been sent out ready and knowing what he signed up for and knowledgeable enough to be more of a help than a worry whether this guy should even be up there right now. At the least, he would have been weeded out before he had the chance to get hurt or hurt someone else.
The training we receive through Comtrain, Gravitec, etc. is good training except for the fact that it is, as everything in the industry, rushed. Originally a 2 week class cut down to 2 days, rushed. The training is good for someone who has some type of experience already, has picked up on some of the vocabulary and who has put a harness on already. It is a great refresher course.
Climbers need a little more than that to get a good start and not try to learn under the extreme pressures of the field until.
Sign me up. I would love to continue working in this industry for years more seeing this type of change and giving future climbers a little more security in their chosen field.

Response: Great points! I think that training had to be made more efficient because so many climbers come and go quickly. One thing that doesn’t help is the fact that you don’t know how the person is going to react to the job. Will they be there for 3 months or 5 years? That is the owners conundrum. They are trying to hire and ramp up for jobs but then they lose people for whatever reason and then need to start the expensive process over again. I believe that is why so many businesses are family owned.  That also is why so many owners stop caring because they tend to get screwed over and they have a hard time really caring. It becomes all business. What we need to do is find balance. We need owners that put safety first, but they still need to make a profit. Remember that safety still costs money. Training is very important.

Do you have an opinion on this?

Listen to  iTunes or Stitcher for more commentary! Podcast Download

Create your plan and career path with some products for wireless deployment and the tower workers! Start with the Introduction to Tower Climbing, then get The Field Worker’s Aid for Tower Site Work, then to do the work you need to look at the Scope of Work Training, and finally the Tower Worker’s Logbook to log your high time and drive time and your project responsibilities, go to Learn more about my products! for more information!

Go to the IWCE conference and see me! I will be on the “Tower Safety and Regulatory Compliance” panel on March 17^th, 2015. Don’t you need an excuse to go to the Las Vegas convention center. I will share the stage with Cory Crenshaw, Charles Ryan, Dr. Denis Boulais, and Robert Johnson. Our moderator will be J. Sharpe Smith of AGL Magazine. Here is a list of exhibitors that will be there. I will be speaking and I may need some safety gear, email me at wade4wireless@gmail.com so we can talk! Make sure you sign up for this forum running 1:00PM to 4:30PM because let’s face it, these are issues you deal with on every job!If you want to talk after the conference, let me know.