
We have had trouble in the past with the Company trying to use the Illinois Law known as the Fire Sprinkler Contractor Licensing Act as an excuse to contract out fire protection work at Byron and QC Stations. Some managers at these stations believed that the law said the employer needed a license and the person performing maintenance and testing had to be a designated certified person. This designated certified person would have to attend NICET level 3 training and it takes years to become NICET Level 3 qualified. Fire protection maintenance and testing is a large amount of work inside a Nuclear facility. We have been successful at talking to Senior Corporate Managers within the Company and getting them to back off contracting out this work. However, we saw this as an issue in the future for us as people move on. We became aware that there was legislation, House Bill 3714, in the works to revise and amend the Fire Sprinkler Contractor Licensing Act. President Terry McGoldrick, Vice President Bill Phillips, Business Representative Tom Hinspeter and Business Representative Ben Busser reached out to the State Fire Marshall and our IBEW State Conference Lobbyist John Lowder and began working on language to exclude us from this State Law all together. We had multiple phone calls on the topic. We spoke of the amount of training and qualifications that Local 15 workers possess inside of the Nuclear plants and the fact that we are highly regulated by the Federal Government through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as to why this law shouldn't impact or change any work we are currently performing in-house. The language we ended up reaching agreement on is as follows: "The provisions of this Act do not apply to facilities licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under the provisions of 10 CFR 50 or 10 CFR 52 or their employees while engaged in the performance of their official duties."
This language, among other amendments were added to House Bill 3714. It was voted on and passed by both the Illinois House of Representatives and the Illinois Senate on June 15th and 16th. Then this bill was signed into law by Governor Pritzker on August 27th. This is just another example to show being involved in politics helps