Hydro to lay off 202 workers after two unions reject proposal for unpaid days off By: Larry Kusch Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, Jun. 5, 2020

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/06/2020 (1968 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

During last fall’s ice storm, they worked long hours, some away from their families for weeks at a time, sleeping on gymnasium floors, as they laboured to restore power to thousands of Manitobans.

In late November, Premier Brian Pallister rose in the legislature to honour their work, treating them like heroes and asking that all their names be read into the assembly’s record of proceedings.

But on Friday, in response to government-mandated cost-cutting, Manitoba Hydro announced the four-month layoff of 190 of those same workers.

“Those are the staff that the corporation has chosen to deem as expendable,” said Mike Espenell, business manager with Local 2034 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, reacting to the move.

In addition to the IBEW layoffs, Hydro said 12 members of its natural gas unit would also be temporarily laid off. An official with their union, Unifor, said the dozen workers include eight first responders to emergency calls.

While both unions had been offered three days of unpaid leave for all members in place of temporary layoffs for some, they said they balked at the proposal when Hydro wouldn’t assure them there’d be no future layoffs.

Hydro president and CEO Jay Grewal announced the layoffs in a press release Friday. She said the 200 affected staff was a significant reduction from the approximately 700 layoffs the utility was originally anticipating.

“As I have said previously, this was absolutely not our preferred course of action,” she said.

“We will make all efforts to minimize the impact of these temporary layoffs on service to customers, while maintaining the safety of our system and employees in every aspect of our operations.”

Last week, the corporation announced that close to 1,000 managers, executives and non-union staff would take three unpaid days off over the next eight months to meet the government’s savings targets. The measure was expected to save $1.4 million.

The layoffs announced Friday are expected to save $4.1 million, Hydro said.

Terry Dunlop, president of the Association of Manitoba Hydro Staff and Supervisory Employees, said Friday his 774 members have also agreed to take three unpaid days off.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 998, which represents 900 clerical and administrative staff at the corporation, has recommended that its members accept the unpaid days off, after failing to get the corporation to consider alternatives, local president Michelle Bergen said. A vote will take place next week.

Bergen said 28 CUPE members are facing a four-month layoff if the proposal is rejected.

She said workers are disappointed that Hydro refused to participate in a federal work-share program that could have seen the corporation avoid layoffs or unpaid days off. Manitoba Public Insurance has enrolled 250 of its employees in the program, which tops up pay for workers who lose hours.

“We fought the good fight,” Bergen said, noting that all Hydro staff at one time faced the threat of an eight per cent wage cut over a four-month period, or the equivalent of about six unpaid days.

Gavin McGarrigle, Unifor’s western regional director, said Pallister misled the public when he promised to protect front-line workers during the pandemic.

“There’s no question that the heavy hand of the government is all over this,” he said of the layoffs and unpaid days off. “It’s sort of like hit this (cost savings) target and tell you the reasons why later.”

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Grewal said Friday that the layoffs will commence in the next two to three weeks.

However, that will only apply to the dozen Unifor members, who must be given two-weeks’ notice of any layoff, according to their collective agreement.

IBEW’s contract with Hydro requires a 90-day notice period. That would push the four-month layoff period well into fall — a time when bad weather, maybe even another ice storm, could make the workers’ absence felt all the more.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca