Our region moved to a (near) 24 hr coverage schedule a couple years ago despite having nowhere near the required staffing to safely accomplish this. Since then overtime increased (x4 at one point), workload has greatly increased on all field techs, and every week (sometimes everyday) there will be more work than the staff can handle. When this happens you are told that you can’t go home. Sometimes they won’t let you go due to not having anyone working the next shift, even if there are no pending orders. Company wide this is referred to as “being held hostage”. Every 6 months a new shift schedule tries to make the spread out coverage work but it usually ends up worse than before. It’s gotten to the point that those responsible for making the shifts do not even work with the supervisors of the field employees. Working in the NW no matter the base you work out you will end up covering an area from Santa Barbara to San Simeon, especially the night shift techs have driven over 300 miles in a busy night. As a result there are regular large exoduses of techs at all of the NW bases, often simultaneously which just dumps more work on the few that remain. Most people weighing the company know to avoid this job so mostly external people are hired to fill these spots which takes longer and requires more training. Rather than fix these issues the company restricts ETRs from bidding to other positions for about 3 years (down from 5). Currently another tactic to trap people in this position is to hire people externally to other job classifications without allowing current employees to apply, effectively leaving ETRs with nowhere else to go in the NW region. This was not allowed by the union until a last minute change in the rules by a union president who has been voted out. Despite this a lot of techs have still left, with 3 out of 4 of the NW bases severely understaffed. The 4th base ends up propping up the others, but now people are starting to leave there too. Eventually the whole region will be too understaffed and it will result in a serious injuries, accidents, or major incidents.
