Utility owns both Metropolitan Edison and Jersey Central Power & Light.
View full sizeJohn Christensen of the Eastern Panhandle Labor Council in Martinsburg Union joins some 200 union workers picketing FirstEnergy's annual shareholder meeting today in Morgantown, W.Va. At least 200 union workers picketed FirstEnergy’s annual shareholder meeting in West Virginia today, demanding the Ohio-based utility hire enough people to keep the power on without forcing an ever-shrinking labor force to work as many as 1,800 hours of overtime a year.
The utility owns both Metropolitan Edison, which serves the Easton area and other parts of Northampton County, and Jersey Central Power & Light, which serves almost all of Warren and Hunterdon counties.
Chuck Cookson, FirstEnergy executive director of labor relations and safety, said the company is offering an 8.5 percent wage increase over four years as part of the ongoing negotiations for a new contract, but it must have more flexible work rules in exchange so it can respond quickly to outages.
In the case of JCP&L, crews worked around the clock to restore widespread power outages caused last year by Superstorm Sandy. FirstEnergy sent employees from other regions of the country to assist in the restoration efforts, which in extreme cases in Hunterdon County took more than two weeks. Many state and local officials criticized the utility’s response to the storm.
“We provide electric service 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said, “and we need and require an appropriate response from our employees when we need them.”
But Bob Whelan, president of Local 102 of the Utility Workers Union of America, said the number of employees has dropped steadily since 1996, with a 40 percent reduction in the number of line workers, the employees who reset power poles, string lines and restore service after accidents and storms.
Other groups have been hit as hard or worse, Whelan said, including garage mechanics who keep bucket trucks working.
Protesters with Locals 102 and 304, which represent employees at FirstEnergy companies that serve parts of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, erected a 12-foot inflatable rat outside the Waterfront Place hotel in Morgantown, where they were joined by United Steelworkers and United Mine Workers of America members.
FirstEnergy’s contracts with the two locals expired April 30, but members working under their previous terms while a new agreement is hammered out.