How are customers impacted?
The strike hit at a difficult time for PECO. The storms that blew through the area Saturday evening disrupted power for thousands of PECO customers. IBEW Local 614 Business Manager Larry Anastasi said they are sympathetic to those who lost power during extreme heat.
“There’s people that have been off power for a couple of days, and when you’re out of power, every minute seems like a day,” Anastasi said. “And with no end in sight, I think this is a good example of how the company actually feels about its employees and its customers.”
Anastasi said out-of-state contractors aren’t familiar with the infrastructure, and if the workforce had been available, power would have been restored more quickly.
PECO said that by Sunday evening, the company had restored power to all but 6,000 homes and businesses using non-union employees and out-of-state contractors. By Monday, about 2,000 remained without power, which the company expects to fix by Tuesday morning.
“This is all part of our extensive contingency planning efforts, where we are utilizing qualified contractors, some of which have already worked on our system, and are trained to handle the work they are performing,” PECO said in a statement. “Utilizing contractors and crews from outside of our region is very common, especially during large storm events. This allows PECO to increase staffing during storms or emergencies to ensure we can restore service as quickly as possible for customers.”
PECO also said it has had to beef up security to accompany non-union workers because “union protestors are showing up at restoration sites and impeding that work.”
The union disputes that, and instead, said PECO has deliberately disabled their publicly accessible power outage map.
“PECO wants to complain about lawful pickets to avoid explaining why they’re wasting money on inexperienced, out-of-state contractors who are leaving customers in the dark,” said Melissa McCleery, IBEW Local 614 spokesperson. “Local 614 members are exercising their legally protected right to picket.”
On Saturday, the union said three of their members were assaulted by company security in separate incidents. PECO denied the allegations.
The company said it disabled part of the website detailing outages due to security concerns, but said the number of outages is still viewable.
PECO provides electricity to 1.7 million ratepayers in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs. It also serves about 550,000 suburban customers with natural gas.
‘Not bargaining in good faith’
PECO and the union have also been at odds regarding each side’s commitment to reach an agreement.
Both have filed unfair labor practice complaints. While a federal mediator has been assigned to the case to aid in negotiations, PECO said, “the union has not agreed to participate.”
On Monday, Anastasi said the company is trying to wear them out.
“The company moves incredibly slow by design, and they feel they have an endless supply of money and an endless supply of resources, and they want to use those resources to try to beat us up,” he said.
PECO said it is “committed to engaging in good-faith negotiations to reach an agreement that is fair to our employees, while supporting the long-term needs of our customers and the communities we serve.”
