Lineman Bull$hit

08/20/2026

Coming soon to a show up near you...

Better...NEVER RESTS
~Kevin

08/03/2026

WHEN THE TRAINING BECAME REAL

Tuesday morning, while on storm, we were standing in a parking lot going through the host utility’s onboarding.

It was supposed to be routine.

Sign in. Listen to the expectations. Cover the hazards. Get everybody released and ready to go to work.

Then the utility representative conducting the onboarding suffered a medical emergency. One second he was standing there speaking to the group, and the next he crumpled to the pavement and lost consciousness.

What happened after that deserves to be recognized.

Nobody stood around waiting for somebody to take charge.

People moved.

Someone went after the AED.

Someone called 911.

Someone immediately began checking his vital signs.

Another person headed toward the entrance of the facility to flag down EMS and make sure they could get directly to us without wasting valuable time trying to figure out where the emergency was.

There wasn’t any chaos. There wasn’t any arguing. There wasn’t any confusion about titles, classifications, employers, or whose responsibility it was.

There were Union journeyman linemen, foremen, safety representatives, and others from different crews and different companies standing there together.

Most of them hadn’t worked together before.

But when a man hit the ground, they responded like they had.

That’s the part worth talking about.

We spend a lot of time sitting through first aid classes, CPR training, AED training, storm onboarding, job briefings, and emergency response discussions. We talk about who’s calling 911. We talk about who’s getting the AED. We talk about who’s meeting emergency responders at the gate.

Tuesday morning, all of that stopped being something written in a safety manual.

It became real.

Nobody knew they were about to be tested. Nobody had time to rehearse. Nobody had time to look around and wonder what everybody else was going to do.

They simply saw what needed to happen and did it.

That’s professionalism.

That’s preparedness.

That’s the culture of the IBEW and the Union movement.

It’s people from different backgrounds, different classifications, different contractors, and different responsibilities coming together when it matters most.

No ego.

No hesitation.

No waiting for permission.

Just Union people taking care of another human being when he needed them.

I’m proud of every person who responded Tuesday morning.

They represented the IBEW, the Union, this trade, and themselves exactly the way they should have.

That’s Brotherhood.

Not the word.

The action.

Together We Rise.

In Solidarity,
Kevin Robinson

07/11/2026

IN SOLIDARITY

We put it at the bottom of letters.

We use it to close emails, speeches, meeting minutes, and social media posts.

In Solidarity.

Two words that have been used so often they’ve started to feel automatic. Sometimes they’re typed without thought. Sometimes they’ve become little more than a Union-flavored version of “sincerely.”

But those words were never meant to be decoration.

They’re supposed to mean something.

In Solidarity means I don’t stand beside you only when it’s easy, profitable, popular, or convenient. It means your fight matters to me because sooner or later, the same forces pushing against you will come looking for me.

It means we understand something working people have always had to learn the hard way…

Alone, we can be replaced.

Together, we have power.

In this trade, solidarity isn’t some abstract political idea. It’s woven into everything we do. Nobody builds, maintains, and restores this country’s electrical system alone. Every pole set, every wire pulled, every switch made, every storm worked, and every light turned back on depends on people trusting one another enough to do their part.

The trade itself is an act of solidarity.

The apprentice trusts the Journeyman teaching him.

The hand in the air trusts the people on the ground.

The crew trusts the foreman to make decisions that put their lives ahead of production.

The foreman trusts the general foreman to give him the people, equipment, information, and time needed to do the work correctly.

Families at home trust all of us to protect the person they love.

That’s solidarity.

It isn’t a slogan hanging on a Union hall wall. It’s the invisible line running between every person involved in the work.

And when that line breaks, people get hurt.

Solidarity means we don’t watch another hand struggle and decide it isn’t our problem. We don’t let an apprentice get used as cheap labor without being properly taught. We don’t let a Brother work beyond his ability because nobody wants to slow down. We don’t let fatigue, pressure, ego, or poor planning push a crew toward a decision we already know isn’t right.

We step in.

We speak up.

We carry our share of the weight.

Not because we’re trying to embarrass somebody or prove we’re smarter than them… but because their life matters more than their pride, and their family matters more than today’s production number.

That’s what In Solidarity is supposed to mean.

But let’s be honest about something.

Solidarity doesn’t mean blind agreement.

It doesn’t mean protecting bad behavior just because the person responsible carries the same ticket we do. It doesn’t mean staying silent while somebody cuts corners, abuses apprentices, ignores safety expectations, undermines working conditions, or takes advantage of the very Brotherhood they claim to represent.

That isn’t solidarity.

That’s cowardice wearing a Union sticker.

Real solidarity has enough courage to tell the truth.

Sometimes being your Brother’s Keeper means standing beside him against the world. Sometimes it means putting your hand on his shoulder and telling him he’s wrong before his decisions hurt somebody.

Accountability isn’t the enemy of solidarity.

Accountability is how solidarity survives.

A Brotherhood without accountability eventually becomes nothing more than a club where people protect the name while abandoning everything the name was supposed to stand for.

We owe each other more than that.

Every wage we earn, every benefit we receive, every safety rule we work under, and every condition we sometimes take for granted exists because somebody before us stood in solidarity with people they might never meet.

Men were blacklisted.

Families went hungry.

People were beaten, threatened, fired, and killed.

They didn’t make those sacrifices so we could inherit the benefits and forget the obligation.

They built something for us.

Now it’s our turn to decide whether we’re going to strengthen it or slowly spend everything they left behind.

Because solidarity isn’t just about the people standing beside us today. It reaches backward to the hands who built this trade and forward to the apprentices who’ll inherit whatever we leave behind.

We’re standing in the middle of generations.

That ought to carry some weight.

It ought to change how we act when nobody’s watching. It ought to change how we treat the newest apprentice on the crew. It ought to change how we talk about other Locals, other classifications, other contractors, and other hands.

We can argue. We can disagree. We can challenge one another. Hell, we should.

But we cannot allow every difference of opinion, jurisdictional dispute, contractor rivalry, or personal grievance to convince us that the person across from us is the enemy.

The real enemy has always benefited when working people fight among themselves.

They benefit when one crew undercuts another.

They benefit when one Local celebrates another Local’s struggle.

They benefit when experienced hands refuse to teach the next generation.

They benefit when Union members forget that the strength of the ticket doesn’t come from the piece of paper in their wallet. It comes from the people willing to stand behind it.

A ticket without solidarity is just a receipt.

This industry is changing. Technology is changing. Training is changing. The workforce is changing. Companies are getting larger, contracts are getting tighter, and the pressure to produce more with fewer people isn’t going anywhere.

That makes solidarity more important, not less.

Because when production pressure rises, solidarity is what keeps one hand from being sacrificed for a schedule.

When storms scatter us across unfamiliar territory, solidarity is what makes a stranger from another Local feel like a Brother before he ever introduces himself.

When a worker is injured or killed, solidarity is what surrounds the family after the trucks leave and everybody else moves on.

When working conditions are threatened, solidarity is what turns one person’s problem into everyone’s responsibility.

That’s the part we cannot afford to lose.

We shouldn’t say In Solidarity unless we’re willing to live it.

It means I won’t knowingly take food off your table to put more on mine.

It means I won’t climb over your back for a title.

It means I’ll teach what I know instead of guarding it like it belongs to me.

It means I’ll speak when silence would be easier.

It means I’ll listen when a Brother tells me I’m the one who’s wrong.

It means I’ll stand for the dignity of the trade even when there’s no applause for doing it.

Most of all, it means I understand that none of us owns this Brotherhood.

We’re only holding it for a little while.

The men before us handed it down, scarred and imperfect, but still standing. Our responsibility is to leave it stronger, safer, and more worthy of the people who’ll come after us.

So the next time we write those words, we ought to pause before we hit send.

In Solidarity.

Not as a habit.

Not as branding.

Not as an empty closing line beneath a message that divides the very people it claims to represent.

Say it like a promise.

Say it like an obligation.

Say it with the understanding that your Brother’s wages, working conditions, dignity, safety, and future are tied to yours.

Because in this industry, we don’t survive by standing near one another.

We survive by standing with one another.

In Solidarity… means none of us stands alone.

~Kevin
Lineman Bull$hit™ Academy
Together We Rise...

07/09/2026

EICA Safety Wallet vs. JNCTN: My Line In The Sand

Now let’s quit dancing around it.

This ain’t just a technology conversation.

This ain’t just about digital credentials, online wallets, APIs, compliance dashboards, or whatever other polished language gets thrown around when somebody’s trying to sell the trade a new system.

This is about control.

This is about trust.

This is about whether the Brotherhood keeps ownership of its own standards… or whether we hand that power to an outside third-party vendor from another country that doesn’t understand who we are, where we came from, what this ticket cost, or how many men had to bleed, fight, sacrifice, and die for the conditions we’ve got today.

And that’s where I draw the line.

Not a soft line.

Not a dotted line.

A hard damn line.

Because I’m not against technology. I’m not against digital credentials. I’m not against making it easier for a hand to carry proof of what he’s earned. Hell, I think that’s exactly where this trade needs to go.

But I am against letting outsiders build the gate around our work and then tell us they’re doing us a favor by handing us the key.

There’s a difference between a wallet and being a gatekeeper.

A wallet belongs to the hand. A wallet helps a Brother carry his proof. A wallet says, “Here’s my training. Here are my certs. Here’s what I’ve earned. Here’s what I can prove.”

A gate belongs to whoever controls access. A gate says, “You may enter.” A gate says, “You don’t meet the ruleset.” A gate says, “Wait over there until the system decides whether your career, your ticket, your training, and your experience are good enough.”

That’s a hell of a difference.

And any Union hand who can’t see that needs to slow down and think about where this road can lead.

JNCTN may have the capability. Fine. Nobody’s saying a slick platform can’t be built. Nobody’s saying a third-party vendor can’t create digital credential tools, compliance checks, access controls, dashboards, and all the fancy s**t that looks good in a presentation.

But capability ain’t Brotherhood.

Capability ain’t sacrifice.

Capability ain’t trust.

Capability ain’t history.

Capability ain’t a substitute for a system built from inside the trade by people who actually understand the work.

That’s why EICA Safety Wallet matters.

Because EICA didn’t come crawling in from the outside trying to turn our standards into somebody else’s product. EICA came from our industry. From our work. From our hazards. From the crane-and-digger derrick world that actually touches linework. From the side of the fence that understands what it means to move heavy equipment around energized lines, through rough terrain, under pressure, with lives hanging in the balance.

And Safety Wallet didn’t show up as some foreign-built answer to a question the Brotherhood never asked.

It grew from inside the house.

That matters to me.

It ought to matter to every local.

It ought to matter to every JATC.

It ought to matter to every contractor who claims they give a damn about Union labor, qualified hands, and protecting the standard.

It ought to matter to every Brother who still believes this trade belongs to the hands that built it.

Because we already have the foundation sitting right in front of us.

We’ve got EICA. We’ve got Safety Wallet. We’ve got the ET&D Partnership. We’ve got Best Practices. We’ve got quarterly refreshers. We’ve got free training resources that cover the things that actually kill our people… grounding and bonding, insulate and isolate, fall protection, rigging, qualified observer, lock-to-lock, fatigue, job briefings, work zones, line of fire, and all the quiet little failures that show up before the body hits the ground.

We’ve got IBEW and NECA already standing behind EICA and Safety Wallet.

So why in the hell would we act like we need to import a gatekeeper?

Why would we hand credential control to a third-party vendor from another country when the Brotherhood already has a homegrown system built inside the electrical industry?

Why would we let somebody else position themselves between the hall and the contractor, between the hand and the work, between the ticket and the standard?

That ain’t progress.

That’s surrender dressed up like innovation.

And I’m not buying it.

I don’t want a digital Flock camera system for the trade.

I don’t want some all-seeing platform tracking every hand, every credential, every movement, every approval, every denial, every delay, and every access decision until the worker becomes a profile and the Brotherhood becomes a data set.

I want a system that protects the hand.

I want a system that respects the ticket.

I want a system that helps the foreman know who’s on his crew.

I want a system that helps the hall protect the integrity of the work.

I want a system that helps the contractor verify qualifications without turning every Brother into a suspect.

I want a system that strengthens the JATC, strengthens the standard, and strengthens the Brotherhood.

That’s the lane EICA Safety Wallet should own.

Not because it’s perfect.

Because it’s ours.

And if it ain’t perfect, then we fix it. We build it. We modernize it. We fund it. We support it. We demand better from it. We put the weight of the industry behind it and make it what this trade needs it to be.

That’s what grown men do.

We don’t abandon our own house because somebody pulls up with a shinier toolbox.

We don’t let outsiders build the fence around us because we were too lazy, too distracted, or too divided to strengthen what we already had.

We don’t outsource Brotherhood.

We don’t outsource accountability.

We don’t outsource the standard.

This is the part some folks won’t like.

Good.

They can be uncomfortable and cry foul.

I’m tired of watching this trade sleepwalk into systems that sound harmless until they become normal, then become required, then become weaponized.

It always starts with convenience.

Then it becomes compliance.

Then it becomes access.

Then it becomes control.

And by the time the average hand realizes what happened, he’s standing outside a gate built around his own trade, asking permission from people who never paid the price to belong here.

NO.

Not this time.

Not with this.

If we need digital credentials, build them inside the trade.

If we need better verification, strengthen the system we already have.

If we need more training, use the ET&D refreshers already sitting there.

If we need better records, push Safety Wallet harder.

If we need more accountability, make it Brotherhood accountability… not vendor accountability.

Because there’s a big damn difference.

Brotherhood accountability says, “I’m making sure you’re ready because I love you enough to tell the truth.”

Vendor accountability says, “The system denied access.”

One has a soul.

The other has a login screen.

And I know which one this trade was built on.

So here’s my line in the sand.

I’ll support EICA Safety Wallet.

I’ll support ET&D Best Practices.

I’ll support quarterly refreshers.

I’ll support free industry training being pushed into every local, every JATC, every contractor, every foreman meeting, every storm roster, and every safety stand-down we can get our hands on.

I’ll support a worker-controlled, industry-grown, Brotherhood-respecting credential system that helps a hand carry what he’s earned and helps the trade verify what matters.

But I WILL NOT quietly support handing the keys to our house to an outside third-party vendor from another country while our own home-grown system is sitting there waiting to be strengthened.

That ain’t leadership.

That ain’t stewardship.

That ain’t Brotherhood.

That’s giving away the gate because somebody sold us a cleaner-looking lock.

And I don’t care how slick the pitch is.

This Brotherhood was not built by vendors.

It was not built by platforms.

It was not built by sales decks, dashboards, or digital rule sets.

It was built by hands.

It was built by apprentices who became Journeymen, Journeymen who became foremen, foremen who became teachers, teachers who became stewards, and Brothers who carried each other through storms, funerals, layoffs, injuries, mistakes, and every hard mile this trade put in front of them.

So if we’re going to modernize… and we damn well should… then let’s modernize without selling our soul.

Let’s build from inside the Brotherhood.

Let’s strengthen what’s already ours.

Let’s stop acting like the answer has to come from outside the fence.

Because the truth is simple.

We don’t need an outsider to tell us how to protect our standards.

We need the courage to protect them ourselves.

And if somebody wants to build a gate around this trade, they better understand something before they start digging post holes.

Some of us are already standing on the line.

~Kevin | Lineman Bull$hit™ Academy

07/03/2026

07/03/2026

New Logo

06/23/2026

Honored to be a part of this!!!

06/07/2026

**Dead Should Never Feel Normal**

**SAFETY SUNDAY | June 7, 2026**

I’ve been struggling to put the right words to pen and paper this week.

Not because I don’t have anything to say.

Because there’s too damn much.

I’ve been struggling with where to even start, with everything going on in this trade. The accidents. The close calls. The injuries. The funerals. The families. The crews carrying weight most people will never see.

Every time I think I know where to begin, something else happens, and it feels like I’m trying to speak through grief, anger, and exhaustion all at once.

So I’m gonna start at the heart of what’s wrong.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve started letting things feel normal that should never feel normal.

And I’m telling you right now…

**Dead should never feel normal.**

But before dead starts feeling normal, accidents start feeling normal.

That’s where the numbness begins.

It starts when a man gets hurt and the machine keeps moving. It starts when somebody gets flashed, burned, shocked, crushed, dropped, scared half to death, or sent to the hospital, and the first thing people say is, “Well, at least nobody died.”

I get why people say that.

Hell, I’ve said it myself.

But that line gets dangerous if we’re not careful.

Because “at least nobody died” can slowly turn into permission to move on too damn fast. It can become the phrase we use to make ourselves feel better rather than ask the harder questions.

Why did it happen?

What’d we miss?

What’d we accept?

What’d we rush?

What’d we normalize before somebody paid the price?

A man getting hurt in this trade should still bother us. A close call should still stop us long enough to get honest. A flash should still make the room quiet. A near miss should still change the way we approach the next job.

Because once accidents start feeling routine, fatalities are already standing in the doorway.

That’s the part we don’t like to talk about.

We don’t wake up one day numb.

We practice it.

We practice it every time we shrug off something that should’ve stopped us cold. We practice it every time we call luck a safety plan. We practice it every time somebody goes home different than they showed up, and everybody acts like that’s just part of the trade.

No.

The hazard is part of the trade.

The exposure is part of the trade.

The responsibility is part of the trade.

But hurt shouldn’t feel normal.

Burned shouldn’t feel normal.

Broken shouldn’t feel normal.

Scared half to death shouldn’t feel normal.

And dead damn sure shouldn’t feel normal.

I know some people don’t like the word accident. They’ll say incident, event, occurrence, or whatever language makes the report cleaner and the meeting more comfortable.

Use whatever word you need to use on paper.

I’m talking about real life.

I’m talking about the moment something goes wrong and a human being pays for it. I’m talking about the phone call no family should ever get. I’m talking about the crew that has to stand there afterward and replay every second in their heads. I’m talking about the silence left in the lives of everyone who knew them.

That silence isn’t normal.

That pain isn’t normal.

That cost should never become normal.

And yet this trade has gotten way too damn good at absorbing pain and going right back to work.

We make the post. We say the prayer. We send condolences. We shake our heads. Then Monday comes, and too many people step right back into the same habits, the same weak job briefs, the same production pressure, the same silence, the same assumptions, and the same “we’ve always done it this way” bulls**t that helped get us here.

That’s not honoring anyone.

That’s using grief as a pause button instead of a turning point.

And I’m not saying this from the cheap seats.

I’ve been in this trade long enough to know I haven’t done everything right. I’ve seen shortcuts. I’ve heard excuses. I’ve felt pressure. I’ve watched good hands make bad decisions because the job was moving fast, the storm was wearing people down, the plan wasn’t clear, or nobody wanted to be the one to speak up.

Hell, I’ve made some of those same excuses myself over the years.

But I know this…

When accidents start feeling normal, men stop fighting hard enough to prevent them.

They start accepting things they used to question. They start rushing conversations that should’ve happened before the work ever started. They start assuming someone else checked. They start trusting silence. They start letting fatigue, pride, pressure, and habit make decisions that should’ve been made with a clear head and a serious respect for what can go wrong.

And silence will get people killed.

So to **EVERYONE** reading this, listen close.

Don’t let this trade beat the sensitivity out of you.

Don’t let anybody convince you that being bothered by accidents means you’re weak. Don’t let the jokes, the pride, the pressure, or the old “that’s just linework” mentality numb you to the cost of this work.

If something feels wrong, say it.

If you don’t understand, ask.

If the plan doesn’t make sense, stop the damn job.

That doesn’t make you soft.

That means you still understand what’s at stake.

To the experienced hands, foremen, general foremen, superintendents, safety professionals, owners, and anybody else carrying influence in this trade…

We’ve got to quit acting like numbness is strength.

It’s not.

Strength is giving a damn after you’ve seen too much. Strength is slowing the job down when everybody else wants to hurry. Strength is saying the uncomfortable thing before somebody gets hurt. Strength is looking at a young hand and saying, “Not like that. Not today. Not on my watch.”

We owe that to the dead.

We owe that to the injured.

We owe that to the families sitting beside hospital beds.

We owe that to the crews carrying memories they don’t talk about.

We owe that to the apprentices who are still learning what normal is supposed to look like.

And we owe it to every person who still believes we’re gonna do everything in our power to bring their person home.

Because that’s the promise, whether we say it out loud or not.

When we leave the yard, sign the tailboard, put our gloves on, step into the bucket, climb the pole, walk into the right-of-way, drive through the night, work storm, or take responsibility for the person beside us…

The promise is simple.

**Bring them home.**

Not most of them.

Not just alive.

Not broken.

Not burned.

Not changed forever.

Bring them home.

And when we fail to do that, it better still hurt enough to make us change.

Because accidents should never feel normal.

Injuries should never feel normal.

Close calls should never feel normal.

And dead should never feel normal.

Not in this trade.

Not on our crews.

Not on our watch.

**Bring Them Home…**

~Kevin
**Lineman Bull$hit™ Academy**
**Together We Rise.**