‘Everyone is… afraid for their jobs’ at MHI

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/11/2020 (1958 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While the fate of Manitoba Hydro International (MHI) remains up in the air, staff at the Manitoba Hydro subsidiary continue to leave the international energy consultancy adding to the vulnerability of its future.

This week, an MHI managing director announced her departure and about 15 others have done the same since the parent company issued a “stop work” edict ordering MHI staff to not pursue new work back in early September.

“The Manitoba Hydro executive is not letting us fill any vacancies, and we’re struggling to keep the ship above water,” said a staffer who spoke on condition we would not publish their name.

Hydro CEO Jay Grewal issued a video statement on Sept. 30 saying no decision has been made on MHI’s future and that a third-party review was underway.

Last week, two former senior executives of MHI, Nigel Wills and Allen Snyder, sent letters to Manitoba Hydro’s board making the case for the retention of the international energy consultancy.

Among other things they argue that, contrary to what Grewal said, the risk factor of international work has not “increased significantly” and that while other provincial utilities have exited the international market, they did so for reasons unrelated to MHI’s operations.

Wills said that a week after Manitoba Hydro released its first-ever corporate social responsibility report, management’s treatment of staff is “reprehensible.”

“Everyone is on pins and needles and afraid for their jobs,” he said in an interview. “We are in the middle of the COVID pandemic, Christmas is around the corner and no one knows if they’ll have a job.”

While revenues at MHI have come down over the past couple of years, profits were up during the quarter ending June 30, 2020. That may be because of the reduced expenses from the departure of more than 10 per cent of the staff.

In his letter, Snyder, a former vice-president of three different divisions, said, “The Government of Manitoba is strongly promoting the need for job creation in a post COVID Manitoba. Should we be shutting down a profitable undertaking and transferring jobs to MHI’s offshore competitors?”

Wills included a letter from a longtime MHI consultant who deployed to a number of overseas assignments and said that safety was never a concern for him and his family.

Wills said he and others are speaking out to make sure the board is aware of the positive contributions MHI has been responsible for. 

“We put decades of work into building a good thing,” Wills said, “We are proud of what we and many others have accomplished. We can’t sit idly by and  watch someone destroy what we created for no good reason other than ideology. If we don’t challenge the misinformation then we will be complicit in tearing down what we built.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca