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<p>For the last six weeks, life's been interesting for Ralph Ranghelli, business manager for International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1049. As the leader of 1,850 unionized workers at KeySpan Corp., Ranghelli has been at the center of a whirlwind since the Island's energy main provider agreed in February to a $7.3 billion sale to British natural gas supplier National Grid.</p><p>Did you see the National Grid sale coming, or at least a sale of KeySpan? We kind of suspected something was going to happen, but didn't suspect National Grid, quite honestly. KeySpan had been teeing itself up, so to speak, with regard to slimming itself down, making it lean and mean. I thought it could go either way - an acquisition or possibly preparing themselves for a merger or even buying another company. We weren't sure, but we knew something was in the wind.</p><p>How concerned are your members about the sale? Initially, when the announcement was made, the members stayed rather calm. We told people to not to overreact because we needed to learn more about this transaction. - On the other hand, as the information became available and Grid held a series of impromptu employee meetings, some things were said about the future of the company with respect to outsourcing of work and a reduction in the work force. People started looking into the background of National Grid and saw they weren't really a generating company, so the level of anxiety started to increase. </p><p>The foreign ownership issue kind of crept in, too. People were reluctant; it wasn't the politically correct thing to raise, but my members said it. They said it to me, and they said it at meetings we had at the union hall. There was a level of uncertainty about going to work for a foreign company. On a personal note, whether it's a foreign-owned company or a U.S.-owned company, I can do business with anybody that wants to do business with me.</p><p>Are you working on your English accent? Well, I'm working on preserving the Fourth of July as a holiday.</p>