Rep. Tina Pickett, R-Towanda, is pictured testifying at a March public hearing for the proposed Frontier/Verizon merger at Tuesday's public hearings in Tunkhannock held by the PA Public Utility Commission.

A state lawmaker wants to reclassify workers on rural broadband projects as teledata employees rather than electric linemen.

House Rep. Tina Pickett, R-Towanda, is circulating a co-sponsorship memorandum for a bill to clarify how prevailing wage requirements will be applied to broadband infrastructure development projects. If the state Department of Labor and Industry classifies workers on rural broadband projects in Bradford County, which is part of Pickett’s district, or Warren County as electric linemen, Pickett says, it will mean higher wages and benefits than if the workers are classified as teledata employees.

“Given what is at stake, it is important to understand how L&I’s approach will lead to less broadband development,” Pickett wrote in her co-sponsorship memorandum. “Broadband infrastructure is inherently different from electric line construction, but L&I has refused a request to create teledata-specific job classifications and wage rates for the work that is involved in broadband infrastructure construction- and they are instead relying on the ‘electric lineman’ classification to classify many of the key workers on these broadband infrastructure projects.”

Verizon received $4.7 million from the state toward a $9.9 million broadband project in Warren County. The state has $1.16 billion coming for broadband access projects from the National Telecommunications & Information Administration’s $42.35 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program.

Pickett said classifying workers on these projects as teledata employees will mean government dollars are stretched further and more homes will be able to connect to broadband. That is especially important in rural areas, Pickett said.

“It is critical that we use these federal dollars to maximize the buildout of our broadband infrastructure,” Pickett said. “Not only will this mean improved access to the commercial, educational and government services we typically think of when discussing this issue, it will also mean improving the access of rural Pennsylvanians to vital healthcare services.”

Although federal broadband development dollars have the potential to connect large numbers of Pennsylvanians in rural areas to high-speed broadband internet service, the Department of Labor and Industry (L&I) has enforced the Prevailing Wage Act in a manner that will reduce the impact of these federal dollars.

The very nature of rural healthcare means that patients and providers are long distances apart, and high-speed internet access for rural patients will enable them to receive reliable communication and monitoring services when patients have chronic conditions or unreliable access to transportation. Although many health care providers have access to high-speed internet, the connection needs to go two ways. In areas where there are significant shortages of healthcare professionals, patients with reliable high-speed internet services will be able to receive more of the medical services that many in more populated parts of Pennsylvania take for granted.

The Broadband Communications Association of Pennsylvania testified to state lawmakers twice in 2024 about the the state’s classification of broadband workers as linemen, with association president Todd Eachus lobbying lawmakers in Harrisburg twice last year for broadband workers to be reclassified as teledata linemen or cable splicers instead of electric linemen. The electric lineman classification usually accounts for workers trained to work on high-voltage projects, whereas the broadband workers would have other responsibilities.

“Electric linemen do highly skilled and potentially dangerous work – and they are paid accordingly – but when their wage rates are applied inappropriately to teledata workers, it means that labor costs on broadband infrastructure projects will be artificially inflated,” Pickett said. “Ultimately, this means that fewer Pennsylvanians will gain access to high-speed broadband internet through the federal funding allocated to Pennsylvania.