Unions: Odd Man Out?

Fortnightly Magazine - June 1 1996
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Downsizing

"The short answer is 'yes'. . . . Utilities think they have to cut their costs in order to compete. The easiest way to cut costs is to downsize, get rid of people . . . which means they stop doing the work. And the result is a threat to the reliability of service.

"Pacific Gas & Electric (em this was back in 1994 (em the state commission [announced plans] to introduce competition, and PG&E reacted in a way that to cut costs, to lower their kilowatt-hour rate, was to cut out a lot of people.

"In early 1995, the company said they didn't get enough takers [for early retirement] and therefore they were going to institute layoffs. . . . Heavy storms occurred in early part of 1995 . . . finally the company called off those layoffs. I think then they began to realize some of the problems they were beginning to have, and, of course, they sat down and this is when we formed our partnership."

s Harmony

"What we did, it was like calling a truce to our war, and the company said, 'Look, we want to bring in an outside consultant in terms of maintenance,' and they brought us into that right away and we were part of interviewing those people. When they did their report, the report was announced to us simultaneously. Basically, the report was very critical of some of things that PG&E was not doing. Then, as a result of that, we have worked with them . . . so we have been workers as partners with PG&E, putting in place some maintenance programs and systems to take care of the distribution system. . . . They're bringing us in right at the beginning on a lot of these issues. It's a partnership."

s Working It Out

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