This Labor Day, Thank a Lineworker

By Drew Maloney | President and CEO, Edison Electric Institute

This Labor Day, while millions of Americans enjoy a well-earned holiday weekend, the brave men and women who keep the energy grid running remain ready to answer the call.

America’s more than 100,000 lineworkers often work around the clock to keep power flowing to our homes and businesses — through every hurricane, heat wave, wildfire, winter storm, and Mother Nature’s worst.

And, as energy demand rises, lineworkers and the grid are being tested like never before. Soaring temperatures in July and August saw the grid deliver three weeks of record-setting output in the span of a little over a month, as Americans cranked up their air conditioners. In three separate weeks, nearly twice the amount of electricity that New York City uses in an entire year was delivered in a matter of days.

Meeting America’s growing energy needs will require more transformers, transmission lines, substations, and generation. It will require investment and innovation, with America’s electric companies prepared to invest $1.4 trillion during the next five years to ensure the United States is home to the jobs, industries, and technologies of tomorrow.

Most of all, it will require people. Through electric companies’ partnership with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, we drive workforce development and grid reliability initiatives, ensuring America has the skilled labor that it needs.

Every porch light, small business, hospital, school, and call home is powered by the grid’s extraordinary network of energy infrastructure. And behind that infrastructure is a highly skilled workforce that builds, maintains, upgrades, and expands it to ensure the delivery of reliable, affordable energy to customers across the country.

Lineworkers’ role as first responders is critical to America’s economic and national security. Through the electric power industry’s mutual assistance efforts, lineworkers deploy from all over the country, leaving their homes and families to travel where they are needed.

We saw their work in action last month, when severe storms swept through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, and much of the Midwest, knocking out power to more than 1 million customers. And we saw it earlier this year during Winter Storm Fern, when more than 65,000 workers from 44 states traveled to the Southeast in response to historic ice, snow, and winter weather, restoring power to more than 90 percent of those impacted within a matter of days.

Lineworkers understand that restoring power means getting hospitals fully operational. It means reopening schools and grocery stores. It means getting small businesses back on their feet. It means keeping families comfortable  and safe.

During a recent episode of the Electric Perspectives podcast, I spoke with a group of lineworkers who emphasized their dedication to their craft and helping those in need: “It’s not like everyone can do this line of work. I'm more than willing to make the sacrifice for my community so they can do their day-to-day activities, they can go to school, go to work. It’s just a really good feeling,” said Alabama Power’s Leland Overstreet. 

This Labor Day, I hope America will join me in thanking the lineworkers — and the entire energy workforce — who power our daily lives.

They are not simply maintaining America’s infrastructure. They are building America’s future.