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Dear ESC Local 20 members, Exactly 57 years ago today, we commemorate and celebrate PG&E management first recognizing ESC Local 20 as the collective bargaining representative of technical employees. Since that time our union has changed and grown and now represents well over one hundred technical and professional classifications at PG&E, including dozens of new titles which came under the union’s jurisdiction within the last 3 years. Over these 55 years our union and our members have achieved one of the best contracts in the utility industry, and the pay and working standards of our members are among the best in the country. With over 2,000 ESC Local 20 members at PG&E, 80% of our PG&E membership, benefiting from this contract we have much to celebrate. Unfortunately, today is also the one-year anniversary of the Environmental Services scientists, engineers and professionals voting to join ESC Local 20, and that group still does not have an agreement covering its rates of pay and working conditions. In fact, the Environmental Services group is not alone: over 450 nuclear engineers, nuclear professionals, hydroelectric engineers and professionals, outage coordinators and telecom engineers -- in fact 20 % of our membership at PG&E -- do not have contract language covering their rates of pay and working conditions.
Sadly this injustice is not accidental, it is in fact the result of a conscious labor strategy bought and paid for by PG&E management to punish its most recently unionized workers, to dissuade any future efforts to organize and to weaken and discredit an increasingly powerful and independent ESC Local 20.
When we say things are bad, we mean they are really, really bad. For example, the “final offer” which management plans to impose on Hydro/Power Generation Engineers and Nuclear Engineers includes a lose-lose proposal on pay: vote yes for pay freezes to your classification and pension cuts to your most senior colleagues, or suffer a 12% pay cut immediately. The “final offer” to nuclear engineers would have these highly skilled and enormously valuable employees paid less than all other unionized engineers at PG&E and would also eliminate Senior Consulting/Advising Engineer classifications; these are hard-won prestigious job titles that are given to the most highly skilled and well regarded engineers throughout the company and throughout the field of engineering. DCPP is the ONLY place PG&E management proposes to eliminate these important titles; interestingly almost the entire negotiating committee is made up of engineers possessing these very same titles. If implemented this “Final Offer” would establish the least advantageous rates of pay and working conditions for any group of ESC represented engineers at PG&E including the institution of an unfair overtime provision that requires most engineers to work into their 13th hour on a given workday before earning any extra pay.
PG&E won’t talk - - and won’t listen at the bargaining table. Now is the time for our voices to be heard. Sign up today to join ESC Local 20’s Rally at PG&E Headquarters.
Engineers and professionals will be coming by bus fom Diablo Canyon. Other ESC members will be coming from General Office, from the Oakland engineering center, from Auburn and Fresno and all over the system. If you are an hourly employee, you can take vacation time for as many hours as needed to cover your attendance and travel. Exempt employees can use their flexible schedules to take up to 4 hours off without being charged to vacation. You can drive or take BART, get on the bus at DCPP or Paso Robles, or contact ESC to arrange a carpool.
Also speaking will be community and labor leaders and elected officials from San Francisco and the State Capitol. Please join us!
Rally at PG&E Headquarters Friday, May 29 12:00-1:00pm 77 Beale St (corner of Market), San Francisco Directly at Embarcadero BART and Muni stop To
register to attend the rally, or for more information, click
here: http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/pgeunfair |
