Rchard Bermack Photography

TomBurrows--9146

International Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers,
San Francisco Joint Apprenticeship
and Training Committee
Organized Labor
October 2009

Tom Burrows, Instructor This is the best job I've ever had. I was a rock-and-roll lighting designer back in England and got to travel with bands all over the world. This is even better than that. It is fantastic. You feel you are really doing something. We are teaching guys a way to make a living for the rest of their lives. They're going to bring up families on what they have learned here. It is quite a big responsibility. The trade here is pretty similar to in England. The voltage is a little different, but Ohm’s law and the power law are all the same. One of the funniest things is how the difference in frequency affects music. When American bands play Europe, they pick up their guitar, switch on their amplifier, and the first chord sounds horrible, because the settings on their amplifiers are tuned to 60 Hz and now they’re running at 50 Hz. It can take them hours to get it right. It makes for an interesting story in the classroom.