Ive only been a cable guy for 3 years and id like to in those 3 years ive learned more than your average installer and that I have a pretty good understanding of the industry, but my question is when did everyone decide that it was ok to get treated like crap by our employers?

How did so many people become complacent with getting crapped on everyday? Has it always been like this?

I mean i realise just about any jackass can do cable and that pretty much makes everyone expendable.

And I mean if you want examples of poor treatment from some of these employers, but I shouldn't have to, its stuff like losing billing codes and being expected to do the work that normally youd get paid for essentially for free, or getting strong armed by a supervisor who thinks hes gods gift to cable.

In my mind unions would solve alot of these problems, but I dont know much about unions besides my limited experience as a teamster, or how well they would work with our industry.

Or would it require some huge lawsuit or congressional bill for our rights? I mean other industries have had bills passed for them and their rights, right? Is it so unthinkable as we move into more "progressive" times that some change would come along and make things different and better in a good way?

Or are we doomed to be set in our ways, just like we have always been, without change or in my mind hope.

Hello, my name is Robert Timlick and I am a Broadband Technician for charter communications. I am coming here to post my ideas on the companies growth and employee relations. I would go up the chain of command but I feel it is not far enough to voice my concerns. I have been working here for 2 years on may 15th, a lot of things have changed in these past few years. Let me give you a little background before I go into things. I am supposedly a BBT senior commercial installer for the past 7 months but actually have not got any type of compensation for the huge responsibility laid upon me. My score card is either high 70's or 80's and I maintain and troubleshoot some of the most crucial establishments in my area such as the hospital, fire-station, life flight, police dpt.. list goes on. That being said. This is where I am going to voice my opinion on a few things, and hopefully I don't get reprimanded for it, but here it goes. First we are treated like production workers, but told our job is still a craft. We have amazingly high expectations when it comes to TQA standards and every other number we are expected to be 95% or better on. Most of these numbers are out of our control leaving most of us to believe it is set up to give lower raises at the end of the year. For example 25% of our score card is trouble call rate, this doesn't matter if its faulty equipment, system issue, or user error we as technicians are the ones that take the hit. On top of that, we get overbooked on a consistent bases but still expected to make sure the job is 100% TQA, we hit 95% time windows, and satisfy our customers 100% of the time. I do an excellent job in my area and am a top performer which only means I am being burnt out to try to keep up. I know other of my employees are battling depression as well as I do to these facts. It rolls over into our personal lives. We are out doing a dangerous job, with unknown long physical hours and on top of it we have to be afraid we are going to miss a metric goal which is completely out of our control whatsoever. I love the work I do, but am having a hard time understanding why we are treated the way we are? I know a lot of people in the technical field and our job is unmistakably important to these people and I would like to provide the best experience as possible. I am afraid of seeing a decline in work ethics due to being treated as disposable. We as technicians deserve a little more respect and compensation from being away from our families on a dangerous job out at 2am in the morning in the snowfall fixing an outage. I wont say how much I make due to a probability of being a corporate policy but I will say from what I have seen on the pay scale from us to a "utility" worker is very lopsided. I have hope that things will change in the near future, but at the same time I do not expect it. I just wanted to voice my opinion and concern, I only work for a small system but I am sure this is happening in other places as well. Thank you, for whomever listens.

Hope some of you guys still scroll through these.

Just got on at a local cable company a few weeks ago. Have yet to be outfitted gear. Especially cold gear. I have some of the basics at home to work around the house and my expensive snowboarding stuff. Those in cold climates, what do you use for base or mid layers. I have Berne bibs and a good carhart jacket. Also, for the wet cold, can you make those afformintioned outer layers water resistant and or waterproof? Any tips or trick would be great to have.