Livermore... Negotiations... Yuk... well, almost...

So this week I am taking part of "Core" Negotiations in Livermore.  The "Core" is the name of the AMR Northern California Bargaining unit.  2700 EMTs, Paramedics, Dispatchers, support staff, and billing personnel.  When AMR came into existence in the early 1990's and started buying up all the small mom and pop ambulance companies, employees that had union contracts kept getting consolidated until only AMR remained... and the "core."  It's AMR's biggest mistake not breaking it up while they bought all those ambulance companies... The core is the largest EMS union bargaining unit in the USA, and the most powerful.  A strike in the "Core" would shut down EMS for 2/3 of California.

So it's negotiations, slow and fairly boring.  It doesn't get interesting until the end when $$$$ and the drama of hard choices give it life and meaning.  But the one redeeming part of negotiations in Livermore is that the drive from Salida to Livermore includes driving through a wind farm.

Not my picture... but I'll have one soon...  This wind farm exists on a ridge of small mountains that separates the central CA valley from a smaller plateau as you go west to San Fransisco.  You climb from brown and green agriculture to Tracy and industry to picturesque green rolling hills.  On top of those hills sits the wind farm.  The pass and the 580 freeway drive right through the middle of those hills.

The wind farm always gives me pause... it's fascinating and fills me with a sense of awe to see the hundreds of turbines slowly turning.  I wonder why (for instance) 7 turbines in a row and #3 and #4 aren't turning when the others are.  I wonder just how much power it produces.  I wonder.  It's odd, that such a simple thing makes my creative juices flow.  I'll bring my own camera there soon enough, but not during negotiations....

Too much to do, no time to be creative when you are trying to fight traffic to livermore to fight AMR so that good, hardworking people might actually be able to do more than squeek out a living.....

My musings for now...  more from me later... jason