Cell Tower News: Byrd Telecom forgery; paid sick leave

by Jarad Matula September 18, 2015

written by Jarad Matula September 18, 2015

Forgery puts Byrd Telecom in hot water

One would think that having tower climbers die while under your company’s employment would be tragic and arguably shameful enough. But lying and committing forgery under oath in regard to the incident? That’s exactly what Byrd Telecom did. The Louisiana-based company was in court over $7,000 of fines levied by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration regarding the deaths of two tower climbers in 2013. The climbers were Byrd employees, but to try to get out of paying the fine, the company tried to assert that no, they were not employees. Byrd Telecom claimed the workers were in fact contractors, providing the court with W-9 documents that seemed to prove their status. Unfortunately for Byrd, the court determined these documents were forgeries of the two deceased employee’s signatures. Byrd tried incredibly hard to insulate themselves from any liability, but it failed.

The judge’s decision will not be released until Sept. 28, but the proceedings so far indicate that the court is going to throw the book at this company for lying, forgery and improper rigging among other things. Interestingly, the improper rigging in question involved the improper use of a carabiner. This is becoming a reoccurring trend, since a carabiner was at the heart of another climber death in the news this week.

Contractors get week of paid sick leave in 2017

Thanks to an executive order signed by President Barack Obama last week, wireless companies with federal contracts will have to provide up to seven days of paid sick leave a year beginning in 2017. This writer thinks this a great step in the right direction, improving the rights of all workers, even those with only contract work. Head over to Wireless Estimator for a detailed analysis of both sides of this issue, as well as details on how it will impact the wireless industry and the FirstNet initiative.

Dark fiber and backhaul

On this episode of Cell Tower News, host Joey Jackson discusses the state of the wireless ecosystem, delves into the mysteries of dark fiber and gets an insider’s perspective on backhaul from George Townsend, SVP of business at Tower Cloud.