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My name is Rebecca strub and I am an apprentice here at the City of Tacoma
within the electrical meter and relay technicians
I’ve been at the city of Tacoma for three years.
Over the years I’ve surprised myself
working in male dominant type jobs. Working for Pierce County roads I
operated the jackhammer and a backhoe, and here
I work with a lot of math and numbers which
isn't to farfetched with me as I’ve always been pretty good with numbers themselves.
There's not very many women in the trade
uh...working with their hands, working with tools,
working with the electronics. You see this is the male predominant role
and it shows. Right now we have three female meter techs
and one femaile relay tech
and no females on special projects.
So we definitely need women
it's and untraditional because it's mostly men in the field right now.
I can't think of any real advantages or barriers that I’ve come across.
beng a woman in this line of work
Everybody is really team oriented
around here and very helpful. They haven't made
any of use ladies feel out of place definitely.
The only time I’ve ever actually asked for any help or assistance is when
it comes to climbing ladders or
the meters on bridges 'cause I am deathly afraid of heights.
As a team member other people are more than happy of the pitching in
they don't treat me anything less then
because of my heights issue.
My job responsibilities mainly consist of testing and recalibrating meters,
checking the sockets at businesses and residents when we're there.
Making sure the voltages are all accurate
and that the CT's and PT's are working their way that they should be. There's a
lot of testing with equipment that we do
on homes and businesses on our system
to make sure that everything's working accurately and improperly. We don't want to under
bill and we certainly don't want to over bill. So it's really important that we keep
all of our test equipment accurate and working properly.
A daily assignment at my job is to
get a list of jobs in the morning and then we get to prioritize what's the
most important for the day
and then we run around the city and we try to make sense of making a map of it.
Try to get as many jobs as we can done in a day
and make good use of our time as meter techs out there in the field.
There's been some fare share of stealing of power
and that's the most thing that we see with the economy being up and down.
I’ve seen power theft go up and seen it come way back down also.
We go out to the job site and usually we have to cut somebody for
credit if they hadn't paid their bill anything and that's one of the real
downside to the jobs that you have to do that
but it's just like anywhere else you can't shop lift from the store,
well you can't steal from the power company either.
So we check those sockets every once in a while make sure that they haven't gotten back
into their socket and that they're stealing power and
when things like that come we do reports and we add it to their bill and
we cut it at the pole.
It's not a fun situation but it is something that's realistic that's out there.
Well my name is Kathleen Fitzgerald. I've worked here at TPU for about twenty years
I am a wire electrician.
So I joined the military for four years And I did electronics and
when I got out
I was looking around for a job in the field that I did in the military which
was a biomed tech which fixed medical equipment. Then I met this guy that was
an electrician's and he said why don't you work for the utilities.
It's just the straight piece of wire and I'm thinking a straight piece of
wire and I'm thinking, well
electronics is a little bit more complicated than a straight piece of
wire let me try so I take the exam and I did well
and they called me and they hired me and I'm thinking
this is the best it's an apprenticeship program
to join the apprenticeship you just needed to have at least one year experience
outside in the weather and you get a lot of that from the military
and doing some heavy construction, doing some construction work
and that other one was the military really helped with
just getting more experience in learning,
Let's see, learning the math.
So all of you that I think that um...in high school math is,
is not for you map is everywhere when you get out
believe you me, algebra especially. So for this field you need
to um... know algebra, a little bit of trig,
a little bit of physics. All those classes that you said "Oh no that's not
for me." You're doing it.
you're out there are using heavy equipment
sometimes you not even dealing with electricity you're doing more building, um,
constructing different structures like the job that I am on now.
We are uh... dealing with a lot of oil.
yes oil. Why oil?
Because oil is what keeps the transformers that we've worked on cool
So we're using a lot of oil,pumping um...
so you have to know about hosing, fittings, O-rings
all different kinds of stuff that has nothing to do with electricity.
Being a female in my job from really, it has its advantages.
The advantage is that you stand out
so it's a lot easier to be notice for your accomplishments
also it's a very, it's a lot easier to be noticed for when you do something
pretty bad. So you want to the best that you can because of the other
females that are coming behind you. So the males, if you have a good example of
the males tend to be a lot easier on the other females that come along behind you,
especially if they haven't worked with a female before.
The disadvantage of being a female especially being a black female in a
more traditional job that are usually for white males
is that, that it's more hardier.
Sometimes you have to be more aggressive
then you would wanna seem because they don't uh... step aside, especially in my
field where I'm the lead worker
so I'm in charge of other males and sometimes that's hard to deal with so
you have to come off a little bit hard, a little bit rougher
then you're softer feminine side.
So a lot of times you seem to be more of a, take on features of a male
more than the female aspect so um... that part is
is hard and after you've done it, like I've done it for twenty years,
sometimes it's hard to um... get along with other females because
you're thinking more in the male mode then in the female mode so that part is hard.
Okay my typical day
we get our job assignments from our supervisors. We usually report in the
morning at eight o'clock
and the one thing that you have to remember you have to get not a eight
you have to get their way before time.
So uh...the most important thing is to be punctual, especially since
being female, there's not many of you, so you are looked at a lot.
They know and they noticed every little tiny you're late so maek sure you're on time.
So we get their, get our assignments, go out to the job sites and do different jobs
out there that uh...include climbing, taking different pieces of equipment
apart uh...dealing with a high voltage
sometimes small electronics parts
because our field this getting more and more electronics which is good for me
because that's mine original background.
So on a typical day that's mostly all the things that you could encounter
except for of course this beautiful weather here in Washington where it
rains all the time so you're dealing with also um...the weather
Hi, my name is LaTosha Razzaq
I work for Tacoma Power in the relay department.
I've been working here for about seven years.
I actually started out as in electrical trainee which was the first year that
Tacoma Power actually put on the electrical training program
which basically was uh... where they
the brought in students, they brought in
applicants and they trained us all
in all the different trades like the line, wire and meter department
and they trained us and gave us all the tools necessary.
They also gave its math classes and things like that
to being able to take what they call the Civil Service Exam to get into one of
the actual apprenticeships in the different trades. Once I first
started working here as like I said as the trainee there was
a little bit of math, and geometry and algebra that is required for the job
and I had just gotten out of
high school basically when I started so it was still pretty fresh but there were
several people in my class that
uh...had been out of school for several years and struggled uh...pretty
much uh...several of them actually struggled with the math and things that
that came along but
the good thing about this work environment is there's always someone
there to help and you know
teach you and give me any guidance that you need so that you can be successful.
It was overwhelming a little bit in the beginning thing with electronics
when actually entered into the meter shop
I had no background whatsoever. Didn't know what a transistor or a diode was
anything like that, hadn't really used any tools
all anything so it was an obstacle to overcome when I first came into
the program but like I said there's always someone around to help you out to
teach you uh... and as long as you stay focused, you practice, you know
doing what you do
it's nothing that you can't learn. As far as being a female in a male
dominant field it is definitely, it
was challenging especially as a trainee coming in when you rotated through
the different groups and you are around males in places where basically just guys
everywhere and you know they kinda have the women shouldn't be here kinda attitude
so that was a little difficult to overcome in the beginning but
um...once you start making friends and let them know, you know,
I'm not going anywhere I mean you do what I have to do
and they kinda lighten up and then you make, you know, make lots of friends.
Before I started here Tacoma Power I
actually drove a school bus for several years which a lot of people
kinda figure out and wonder how I got into that, because I had my
CDL driving the school bus I actually came in and went to apply to be garbage
truck driver just 'cause I had my CDL
and they actually weren't hiring for garbage truck drivers so they,
the lady in the office, you know, just said
"Did you see this for the electrical trainee?"
I ended up applying for it and
here I am seven years later actually more than seven years later and I
love my job. I love coming to work every day we have a great bunch of people
that work year here it's never a dull moment have a pretty good group of people