Allegheny Energy’s workers hope to help company through financial problems
(Editor’s note: This the the third story in a three-part series)Allegheny Energy’s workers hope they can help the company get back on solid financial footing. “We are very concerned about the financial situation that Allegheny Energy is in,’ Bill Sterner, UWA Local president said.
“We have been meeting with them and they have been sharing information with us about the financials. We have also been looking at the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) filings and evaluating what we think all this means.
“We have had some meetings with them regarding different ways we can help to try to contribute to getting out of this mess. Those meetings have just been initial and we have come up with some ideas and we are going to be working to try to help, to make things run smoother.
“There have been no discussions whatsoever regarding concessions. Our contract is settled and we feel that is a closed mater. But there are always way the employees who do the work every day can make suggestions. As far as pensions are concerned, we think the pension is safe as long as the company stays solvent.’
Among Allegheny Energy’s regulated utilities, doing business as Allegheny Power, is West Penn Power Co., serving 600,000 customers in Pennsylvania, including Fayette, Greene and Washington counties. It employs about 2,000 people in the Pittsburgh region.
Sterner said the union is also concerned about Allegheny Energy’s plans to sell generating plants.
“This could involve two or our plants, Mitchell Power Station and Armstrong Power Station in Kittanning. We are very concerned over that and we are trying to get all the necessary information and documents regarding this proposed sale. We want to ensure that all the benefits and working conditions are preserved and would be honored by any potential new owner.
“Things have just been happening very fast,’ he said of the situation.
“A lot has happened in past few weeks with the downgrade and the technical default and the lawsuit with Merrill Lynch. So we are absorbing and evaluating all of this from our own perspective. We are not ready to make a judgment as to whether or not we think everything is being done can be done. When we have suggestions to make we will make them to protect the members we represent,’ he said.
But Sterner and the UWA see a larger villain at play.
” Our union the UWA has been opposed to deregulating the electric utility since this idea started being talked about in the early 1990s. We predicted that things like what are happening here at Allegheny and quite a few other utilities across the country would result because of trying to turn electricity into an everyday commodity on the open market.
“That is a flawed concept. There is a lot of proof out there that this was a bad idea. Electricity should be regulated and should have oversight for the very reason what we see happening now with manipulated trades and with Enron. These are the very reason electricity was regulated in the 1930s.
“If you look back in history the same things that are happening now happened in the 1920s and early 1930s because electricity was not regulated and it was controlled by a few great big large concerns. You look back in history to see why FDR (President Franklin D. Roosevelt) did this to start with,’ Sterner added.
“This is d j vu all over again.
“Electricity is too vital and different than all other energy sources, too, in that it can’t be stored. It has to be generated all the time.
“The idea there can be an open market where prices are going to go up and down based on supply and demand and that this can be transferred over to customers makes it so unreliable,’ he said.
Sterner added the UWA was the only group “out there waving the red flags and everyone thought it was just for self-interest because we thought we were going to lose jobs’ when deregulation was discussed.
“There have been hundreds of thousands of jobs in the electric utility industry lost during this period of time. These have been skilled people that haven’t been replaced.
“We are getting to a crisis stage with that, too. They have sucked a lot of wealth out of this industry in the past decade and look at the condition these companies are in. There will be some long-range damage in this country to this industry.’
Deregulation, Sterner said, ” is just an attempt to suck a lot of wealth out of an industry.’