Firing somewhere around 1,000 BC Hydro employees should save customers from an excessive rate hike, but the decision is causing outrage from the employees' union.
On Aug. 11, a BC Hydro review panel released its findings showing BC Hydro must decrease their expenditures by more than $800 million over the next three years in order to cut their proposed annual rate increase in half from eight per cent to 3.9 per cent.
In order to reach that goal, the panel recommended BC Hydro defer capital expenditures, update trade income forecasts, change the amortization period for demand-side management programs and downsize their workforce by 1,000 to 1,200 employees.
Once the union representing hydro employees found out about the recommendations, they voiced their displeasure.
"My anger is the result of your gratuitous and unwarranted assault on BC Hydro employees, and the selective use of data to paint a deceptive portrait of thousands of dedicated workers who frequently are attacked merely because they - like you and many other hard working British Columbians -happen to work in the public sector," said David Black, president of COPE 378, in a letter sent this week to John Dyble who was on the review panel and is deputy minister to the premier. "I do not seek an apology for the unprovoked injuries-and fear-that you and your colleagues have inflicted on thousands of hard-working BC Hydro employees and their families. Rather, I ask you to correct the public record by issuing a revised report that accurately depicts BC Hydro's workforce and its related costs and benefits."
The picture painted by the review panel is one of excess, focusing in on a 41 per cent increase in the number of BC Hydro employees between 2006 and 2010.
"This is even if you exclude the B.C. Transmission Corporation consolidation. So it is substantial," said Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland, acting deputy minister of advanced education, and member of the review panel. "In exploring that with BC Hydro, the explanations were that there's a renewed focus on maintenance, capital investments and the demand increases for energy, however they also acknowledge that those FTE [full time employee] increases or expansions were not monitored, were not controlled, and so we saw excessive amounts of duplication in areas of finance, HR, 650 engineers versus what you might see in the Ministry of Transportation, six times actually. So there were lots of opportunities and the panel has made it a recommendation in regard to FTEs and we have worked through all of those details with BC Hydro, where we saw those opportunities and I know they are working on a plan for that."
The workers' union wants to see that plan changed, and more jobs saved, claiming the data the panel used to determine the 41 per cent employee increase was skewed.
"Because of policies enacted by Christy Clark, Gordon Campbell and the B.C. Liberals after their election to government in 2001, BC Hydro's workforce by 2006 was at its lowest in over a decade," Black said, noting at that time employee numbers had dropped to just 4,203. "It is painfully evident why 2006 was the base year selected."
While the union fights to try to save some of the jobs now on the chopping block BC Hydro CEO Dave Cobb feels comfortable with what needs to be done.
"We couldn't get to the 50 per cent rate decrease through operating costs alone and frankly it was my job to draw the line where I felt going any further [with layoffs] would either be unsafe for our people doing the job or would lead to reliability challenges and cause us to really fall short of the overall objectives that we have as a company. I think we found that spot," he said.
