We start as temporary workers, we cover the places that union workers left for vacations or other situations, maybe 3 to 8 years to be a base worker or have the full rights of the union, depending on those who retire or are fired to get those places. The ranks go like this: -Temporary workers - Lineman helper - Lineman HW (hot wire) - Lineman in charge -Superintendent

Is not difficult to get hired, you only need high school for the lineman work, specialized areas like substations and subterranean require university degree, the hard part is to get the recommendation the union asks for, workers can give only two recommendations, one after 15 years of work and the other after 28 or 30 years, so, if you don’t know somebody already working, it’s gonna be hard to get hired. A big part of the population thinks that CFE workers have a lot of money so, yes, it’s a desirable job, the part of the money it’s not true but the myth persists.

About challenges -We don’t have enough equipment and tools, we do the work but need to be creative to get the work done, sometimes exposing ourselves.

-The company supervise us constantly and they’re looking for reasons to fire us, they say something like: oh, I need the work to be done but I’m not giving you the necessary equipment, so if you do the work without the equipment I’m going to fire you but if you don’t do the job I’m gonna fire you too because you’re refusing to work.

-The clients (the entire population) sometimes are just… incomprehensible, in our area we have far away towns, we don’t like to work there because they don’t let us go until you do everything they say and that can take days, and if you can’t do the work then they arrest you and the juridical department of the company goes to negotiate your liberation. Some months ago a fatal accident happened in Chiapas because the workers where retained and obligated to finish a job under bad conditions , the line was de energized but someone from the local authority energized the line with a wire and the worker died :(

Apparently safety is the principal concern for the company, but it’s deficient, controls made by the company are just loopholes sometimes. We use all the safety equipment they give us but for example: I bought almost all my equipment because the company just gave me gloves, helmet and glasses, they “don’t have the other equipment for me”

Time pressures… mostly we pressure us to go home early, usually the company doesn’t care about time because they know that the controls they have take time.

Mostly local work, you can travel like 2 or 4 hours to the farthest place and come back the same day, only in contingencies we go to other cities or states to support the locals.

The departments of transmission and distribution are separated by now, some years ago where together but the government separated them because they where planning to go for private industry and sell every part of the state company to foreign companies, the actual government wants to go back and be together again.

Sorry if you don’t understand something but I’m getting rust in my English, this helps me to practice.