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Union Fears the Loss of High Pay and Solid Benefits, Once Virtual Givens at Con Ed

July 1, 2008

Last year, Con Edison officials said, the company sifted through 68,000 job applications to hire 1,314 new workers. So far in 2008, the utility has picked up 528 new people from a pool of 26,000. The deluge of applicants for what has long been seen as a blue-collar ticket to a middle-class life led Louis L. Rana, president of Consolidated Edison of New York Inc., to remark over the weekend that his company was harder to get into than Harvard.

Now, the solid wages and benefits that for decades have led Irish- and Italian-American men to follow their fathers and grandfathers into manholes, bucket trucks and substations are under threat, as the utility and the union that represents 8,800 of its nearly 14,000 workers try to hammer out a new four-year contract. The most recent pact expired on Sunday morning, with the union angry over what it described as the company’s proposal for a 1.5 percent annual wage increase — short of the 4.2 percent inflation rate — and a 401(k)-style savings plan, rather than the traditional pension, for new workers. The union, Local 1-2 of the Utility Workers Union of America, represents almost two-thirds of Con Edison’s employees.

“When I started, Con Ed was a very good company with great benefits, job security,” said Ken Burns, 46, a splicer who works in the Bronx and has 22 years with the company, where his grandfather spent his working life. “But with each contract, our benefits have decreased.”

Like other Con Edison workers interviewed on Monday, Mr. Burns said he liked his job and was treated well. But with gas prices rising, he said he had been spending $120 a week lately to get to work from his home in Stroudsburg, Pa., where he moved because he said it was the closest place he could find something affordable. And he noted that splicers risk serious injury handling high-voltage lines and must work in extreme heat and cold.

The slowing economy and the increase in prices of everyday goods make the prospect of going on strike unappealing to many workers. At the same time, the union has some leverage, because fast-growing parts of the country have a shortage of utility workers and are offering higher wages with lower costs of living.

Talks are scheduled to reconvene Tuesday at 9 a.m.

Wages at Con Edison appear to be healthy for workers without college diplomas, with a general utility worker, the equivalent of an Army private, earning $15.20 an hour to start and topping out at $25.35, which translates into about $52,000 a year for a full-time worker. Meter readers can earn as much as $31.92, mechanics up to $36.33, though it may take them nearly 20 years to reach that level. Splicers like Mr. Burns can earn more than $38 an hour.

As the power industry was deregulated over the past decade, Con Edison, like other utilities, has been under pressure from shareholders and customers to keep labor costs down, eroding some of the benefits that drew workers to the utility.

“I know the company needs to pay for increased prices of fuel, et cetera, but I feel the company is trying to take advantage of the situation,” said Winston Krieger, 49, who lives in Hicksville, N.Y., and has been a welding mechanic at the utility for 20 years. “They’re going backwards. If they give us this this time, what will they do next time?”

Paul Albano, a mechanic in transformer operations for 21 years, said that he started putting money aside as a precaution about a month ago, when the possibility of a strike began to seem real. “It’s hard on me, as well as everyone else,” said Mr. Albano, 45, who supports an ill wife on his wages and has six children. “There are a lot of young people working here with children and older folks with health issues.”

Con Edison executives declined to discuss the tenor or details of the contract negotiations.

With electricity demand in New York City having grown 20 percent in the last decade and baby boomers retiring, Con Edison has been hiring aggressively, and more than a third of the utility’s current work force has less than five years’ experience. That has created a rift between older workers who are trying to protect what they have fought for and younger workers not wanting to jeopardize their standing in the company.

Source: NY Times Read the complete article here

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