Electric company union jumps into battle over rate increase
AG Tong holds firm in opposition to UI hike that would affect 345K
United Illuminating this week got new help in its struggle with state Attorney General William Tong when about 300 unionized employees sent letters condemning Tong for opposing UI rate increase requests while stating that he supports its workers.
The union leadership criticizes Tong for what it calls hypocrisy, and claims that his hard-line stance with the utility’s management is harming workers.
“As UI employees, we take UI’S excellent reliability very personally, and any policy that has negative consequences for the company’s performance is an indirect affront to us and to our work,” according to the hundreds of identical letters delivered Tuesday to Tong’s office.
Leaders of the Utility Workers Union of American Local 470-1 are in unison with UI’S executive leadership in sparring with Tong, who has slammed some of the utility’s rate increase proposals while also demanding UI do a faster job of cleaning up the defunct English Station power plant in New Haven.
The letter-writing campaign centered around a script attacking Tong for not supporting new revenue for UI, saying at one point “The reality is, harm to a company and its management is inseparable from harm to its employees.”
Tong has repeatedly criticized the company for seeking what he calls excessive and unwarranted rate increases while simultaneously taking too long to clean up the defunct English Station power plant.
On Wednesday, his office said the union letters didn’t change his views.
“The attorney general is going to continue to do his job for Connecticut families who cannot afford to pay United Illuminating’s exorbitant rates and ever-increasing demands,” said Elizabeth Benton, Tong’s spokeswoman. “I can assure you that’s exactly what ratepayers want him to do.”
Relations between Tong and Local 470-1 leadership have been frosty in the past year, and the union’s letters complain that the attorney general won’t meet to discuss their differences.
“To date, union leadership has
extended an offer to meet with you three times, yet they have heard nothing in return,” according to the letters. “You fail to consider how the downstream impacts of the rate decision compromise our safety.
“For example, a critical forward-looking safety measure is the upgrade of our vehicle fleet. Even though our vehicles largely feature out-of-date technology and thousands of miles on the gauge, which makes our day-today work more challenging and slower, PURA applies increasingly higher standards on response times and outage restorations,” the union said.
Tong’s office said UI management needs to do better before he’ll meet with the union, and said “no amount of pressure or intimidation” will make him back off.
“When United Illuminating shows that it is ready to honor its legal obligation to clean up English Station in New Haven and recognize that ratepayers cannot pay more, then we will talk,” Benton said.
Typically unions and company management don’t share many policy goals, but that can be different in the cases where unions have a hand in setting rates, according to Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
“A casino union could work with a casino on licensing, a construction union could work with a contractor to get state funding for a project,” Bronfenbrenner said. “When it comes to heath care, they may work together on the state’s (health care) reimbursement policy that could raise costs for health care,” she said.
“Utility unions have a unique history. At the Tennessee Valley Authority, they were very involved in its establishment,” she said. “And remember that workers are taxpayers and consumers too.”