Public Power - July/August 2008 - (Page 40)

RELIABILITY Utilities Cope with a Crumbling Work Force By William Atkinson With 50 percent ofinutility next employees set to retire the decade, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corp.’s 2007 survey of reliability issues, public power utilities and the unions representing them are addressing the challenges associated with an aging and unskilled work force. Not taking into account new retirees, the national need for electrical workers will rise to more than 734,000 by 2014— 78,000 more employees than are currently in the field, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. These barriers come amid the need to build new generation and meet soaring power demands. “We see the problem as being critical for a number of reasons,” said Jim Hunter, utility director for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. “First, we have a massive number of people eligible for retirement over the next five years. The statistics we are receiving from companies show at least 50 percent across the board.” In the past, people often were willing to continue working a few years after they qualified for retirement, said Hunter. But because of the current shortages, forced overtime and other problems are pushing workers to leave sooner rather than later. Down-sizing the work force in the 1990s placed many utilities where they are today, he said. To offset losses from deregulation, many states froze electricity rates, while utilities 40 JULY-AUGUST 2008 reduced their payrolls. “We show about a 40 percent reduction in the overall work force since 1990.” Today, a slimmer industry must compete with telephone and cable companies for qualified employees. With utilities engaged in work force reductions for so long, a lot of training programs went by the wayside, said Hunter. To get future employees ready, the IBEW and several employers have designed a seven- or eight-week “boot camp,” where potential employees go for help passing their entrance tests. The program helps potential employees with things like climbing poles, acquiring commercial driver’s licenses and completing drug testing and background checks before applying for jobs. “We want to do this across all the industry in all of the different disciplines,” said Hunter. “For example, if we start someone out in distribution, but after a week they find out that they don’t want to climb poles, we can possibly move them to power plant training.” “We currently have plans to start five of these programs set up around the country as regional training centers,” he said. The Utility Workers Union of America, AFL-CIO, is also working aggressively to address the labor shortage. Training replacements in a lot of these jobs to the point where they are fully qualified can take four to five years, said D. Michael Langford, the union’s national president. The industry recognizes it must start attracting students at the high school level, said Langford. “We are partnering up with community colleges, work force boards, and the utilities themselves to create a pipeline from the high schools, into the colleges, into the apprentice programs, and then ultimately into the utilities themselves.” After these students get a journey worker card, some end up with a two-year associate’s degree. “They can then continue their education to get a bachelor’s degree and even a master’s degree,” he said. “Reliability is a difficult challenge,” said Bernie Ziemianek, Seattle City Light’s director of energy delivery operations. “Seattle is in a booming building market. There are over 25 cranes in the air right now. Between maintenance and operations, as well as working on new capital projects, it is a difficult thing to manage.” The utility is down about 50 lineworkers, said Ziemianek. “Overall, the labor shortage is a difficult situation in the Pacific Northwest. The pool of lineworkers is small, so the ability to draw people in is difficult.” Besides being a priority at the line and staff level, the labor issue is a priority for the City Council. Each year, Seattle City Light’s Advisory Committee offers recommendations on how to guide the utility toward continued success. “City Light continues to face stress in human capital,” said the committee’s 2008 report. “Its ability to respond is constrained by internal and external factors…including the city’s human resources policies and practices, competition with other utilities, scarcity of qualified labor pool, near-term retirements, and attrition to other utilities.” “A perfect storm is on its way in human resources,” said the report. “On the one hand, City Light’s work force is aging. Approximately 50 percent of its PUBLIC POWER

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public Power - July/August 2008

Public Power- July/August 2008 Contents Perspective 10 Questions Solar Energy Rising Sacramento's Solar Shares Gainesville Crowns a Conservation Idol By the Numbers Curbing Costs of Outages Reliability Green Energy Hometown Connections Customer Service Parting Shot

Public Power - July/August 2008

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