IBEW Local 1245, representing more than 700 utility workers in northern Nevada, has filed a petition with the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada to investigate workforce staffing at NV Energy.
Data released by the union shows that the publicly-regulated utility has an alarmingly high number of employees at or approaching retirement age and has recently cut nearly one hundred jobs—jeopardizing the utility’s ability to provide high-quality services to customers in a safe and reliable manner.
The petition asks the PUC-Nevada to fulfill its obligation to protect electric service reliability by investigating the “graying” of NV Energy’s workforce and the utility’s apparent failure to adequately prepare for future staffing needs.
NV Energy has acknowledged concerns about the impact of a graying workforce on the company. In a recent SEC filing, NV Energy noted the “potential difficulty in recruiting new talent to mitigate losses in critical knowledge and skill areas due to an aging workforce.” But the utility has failed to act on the problem.
Based on NV Energy data provided to the union, as of end of year 2008, more than 21% of NV Energy’s hourly workforce represented by Local 1245 was over 55 years of age and thus eligible to retire immediately. Thirty-six percent of NV Energy’ hourly workforce was over 50 years of age. And, in the mission critical areas of physical plant operations and maintenance, a significant portion of NV Energy’s skilled workforce is more than 50 years of age and is already at or fast approaching retirement.
According to IBEW Local 1245’s petition, NV Energy has not only ignored these issues, but has recently aggravated the problem by reducing the size of its workforce. At the end of 2008 the NV Energy hourly workforce totaled 813 employees. By the end of 2009, that figure was 733. There are even fewer hourly workers at NV Energy today.
The union believes that the shrinkage of the workforce is impacting the quality of customer service. JD Power and Associates, which surveys utility customers, this year rated NV Energy as dead last among all mountain state utilities in terms of customer satisfaction. Ten years ago, before Michael Yackira took over as CEO, the utility ranked first in this same survey.
“Over the last several years, NV Energy has systematically removed all line crews from the Tonopah, Battle Mountain, Minden, Yerington, Lovelock, and Hawthorne districts and reduced the number of line crews in Reno, Carson City, South and North Lake Tahoe, Fallon, and Elko,” said IBEW’s Randy Osborn, who represents the workers in the northern half of NV Energy’s service territory.
“This leaves line crews in Reno, Carson City, Fallon, Winnemucca and Elko with the responsibility to cover all of NV Energy’s service territory in northern Nevada. If a line crew is needed to fix a power outage in Tonopah a line crew has to travel some 200 miles or more from Reno just to get to the outage location,” Osborn said.
The company has also eliminated all but one of its walk-in customer service centers, meaning that there is no longer any place (other than North Las Vegas) where a customer can go and meet face-to-face with a customer service representative to discuss a billing or service matter, such as an impending service disconnection.
NV Energy reported $182.9 million in profits last year and collected $134 million in federal stimulus money. Even as the company was reducing staff and service, it has steadily increased the pay of CEO Michael Yackira, who in 2009 made $4.5 million.
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You can find a link to the entire text of the petition elsewhere on this website.