Jobs: 'It's almost artistic'
Web Posted: 11/18/2006 12:00 PM CST
A rumble fills the dusty unfinished office as Hector Rosales shoves fistfuls of white data cables into a metal tube near the ceiling.Rosales and four other cable installers with CDI Technology Services have just started running the wires that will transmit computer information and phone service to rows of cubicles in new TETCO offices on Northeast Loop 410. Then they must attach them to outlets and the company's computer server room.
They will carefully number and letter each cable and note which colored wires are attached at each outlet to avoid any problems later. In the end, 900 cables filled with four different-colored wires will fill three floors.
"It's not a job for someone who's colorblind," Rosales said.
Rosales, 33, began his career as a cable installer in 1997 when he couldn't find work as an electrical apprentice. It proved a good switch.
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"I enjoyed it," he said. "It's almost artistic in how you present the cables. They must be nice and neat. And I thought it was a lot safer than dealing with high voltage as an electrical apprentice."
Cable installers attach copper wires, fiber optics, computer outlets, telephone jacks and voice over Internet connections based on the amount of power desired and the distance the information will travel. They test the cables and provide customers diagrams that show the outlet attached to each cable.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 60 and the National Electrical Contractors Association offer a three-year apprenticeship focusing on wiring for voice, data and video.
Still, most installers learn on the job. The lack of training and certification requirements has attracted unskilled workers to the field, depressing wages, Rosales said.
But that may be changing since the local IBEW just began requiring all unionized cable installers, called telecommunications technicians and installers, to be certified by one of the major cable manufacturers.
Many clients now require installers to present certificates showing they were trained by manufacturers to use their products, said John Gray, training director of the South Texas joint apprenticeship program.
New construction and rehab projects have put cable installers in growing demand, said Hal Flechtner, operations manager at Fisk Technologies, which employs 25 cable installers.
"There's got to be people to take care of it as needed and as companies move in and out of offices or change configurations," Flechtner said.
The remodels can be tricky when they involve partially occupied buildings. "You have to take care not to disturb existing tenants," said Chris Wayne, 32, who began installing cable in 1994.
Wayne, a project supervisor for Fisk Technologies installers at Lackland AFB and the Toyota plant, has undergone random drug tests and mandatory safety classes to get approval to work for some clients.
Cable installers increasingly must pass background checks since they work in the telecommunications nerve centers of most companies, and many clients won't let installers carry camera phones on their premises.
asidime@express-news.net
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