Love's labour's found

Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost is a comedy about the details of courtly love; it's both a commentary on how much work that love can be and, ironically, how little work that love can be. That's where all that "labour" comes in. Here in America, we drop that extra u and talk about "labor" when it comes to work and the workforce---and one area of the American workforce where labor hasn't been too significantly lost is power.

The production and distribution of power is still a labor-intensive effort from the mining of fuels like coal to the maintenance of equipment like pole-top transformers. Men and women are still steadily and directly in the mix of electricity.

In many vital American industries---logging is a good example---technology has overtaken the labor force. These days, with the right equipment, a single "driver" of a good logging machine can do what used to take a force of strong men weeks to complete.

In power, however, the growth of technology has often meant a growth in workers, rather than a serious cut in workforce. When meters helped separate costs and flow of residences, someone had to be on hand to read those meters. When lines began to be hooked together into grids, someone had to be around to do the connections---and to watch the traffic on those connections.

While it is true that smart meters and smart grid technology may translate into less of a need for meter readers, it remains true that skilled labor will always be an important and vital part of the power equation. Electricity doesn't flow without the right people making it happen. As we all return from a long weekend to celebrate labor in America, that's definitely a positively charged thought to keep in mind: That powerful labor of love is important to America, and the importance of the labor required in that effort should never be forgotten.