CL&P, Union Heading Back to Talks — About What, Exactly?

Connecticut Light & Power Co. and the union representing 1,100 linemen and other employees will now head back to the bargaining table after the union overwhelmingly rejected the company’s latest offer.
As expected, the vote Thursday and Friday was resounding, about 97 percent against the offer, according to the leaders of the two locals of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
There’s nothing odd about unions rejecting offers and returning to talks, but this situation is unusual since key issues — staffing levels, shifts, job descriptions and decades-old work rules — are not part of the negotiations.
The unions, with just under 400 linemen (and one linewoman) at the two IBEW locals, charges that the company’s plan to hire an additional 30 people in that crucial job is way too low, as members are “on call” for many weekends in a row, working too many hours of overtime. The crunch will get even worse, they say, if the company add a second shift, to improve response times — especially as linemen retire.
The company says its hiring plans are adequate to do the job. for its part, CL&P wants to adjust job descriptions and work rules, some of which are outdated.
So, what we have is two sides fighting a labor battle over issues that are not now on the table.  The CL&P offer includes raises totaling more than 10 percent over four years, and would require more workers’ cost-sharing of health insurance premiums.
Frank Cirillo, business manager for IBEW Local 420, confirmed that the issues on the minds of the workers are not the one in the offer, at least not directly.
“The overwhelming issue is the way they’re treated in general. The second issue is the manpower,” Cirillo said.
The standoff has taken on heightened meaning as the one-year anniversary of the October snowstorm approaches, and as regulators continue to discuss staffing at CL&P.
No new talks are scheduled and in fact, the company had not been notified of the vote outcome, although media have reported it. The company had hoped for a different result, but the rejection is not alarming, spokeswoman Caroline Pretyman said.
“This union has a history of voting on contracts multiple times before ratifying, so we are still hopeful that we’ll be able to come to an agreement,” Pretyman said.
As for the job descriptions, Pretyman said the company informed the union it would like to review them, as it’s doing at Yankee Gas, a sister company under Northeast Utilities.
CL&P’s IBEW employees have been working under an expired contract since June 1. The vote of two union locals authorizes IBEW to call a strike at any time, but leaders say that certainly won’t happen before the next round of talks gets underway, perhaps this week. A federal mediator is involved.
Cirillo and John Fernandes, business manager at IBEW Local 457, said in a joint statement Friday night that “CL&P continues to cut staff, implement dangerous amounts of forced overtime, and replace skilled local workers with costly, inexperienced out-of-state contractors.”
Many of the outside contractors have been let go. The real issue here is that as the company tries to change the way the linemen and other employees work, it blames rigid, arcane work rules, while the union blames cost-cutting and excessive profiteering.
Both sides might be right. The mediator needs to get up from the table, go out to the field offices, ask hard questions and come back with a plan. And state regulators need to take a more active role in staffing issues, as part of post-storm reforms.