CONTACT: |
Kyle DeVine |
March 15, 2001 |
CPUC-505 |
213-576-7050 |
A.00-11-038 |
CPUC RESCINDS PG&E, EDISON LAYOFFS
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) today barred Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison (Edison) from cutting costs by laying off employees involved with service and reliability.
PG&E and Edison are ordered to rescind any layoffs of employees which are needed to fully staff customer call centers, read meters every month, timely respond to service calls and outages, and to connect new customers. The Commission also barred the utilities from implementing any other layoffs that may adversely affect service in these areas.
Action taken today on the layoffs is in response to an emergency motion filed on January 8, by the Coalition of California Utility Employees concerning cost-cutting proposals by Edison and PG&E. Edison has laid off 400 workers in its Transmission and Distribution Business Unit and has proposed to layoff another 1,600 employees over the next several months. PG&E has laid off about 505 workers, and has announced plans to release another 675 over the next several months if its cash flow situation is not resolved.
The Commission has a statutory obligation to ensure that utility customers receive "adequate, efficient, just and reasonable" service. The Commission finds that the utility layoffs have degraded service below the levels that customers have a right to expect. The layoffs have delayed new service connections, increased delays in answering calls, added to the likelihood of delays in restoring service after outages, and increased opportunities for billing errors. More layoffs, the Commission stated, would only exacerbate these service problems.
With the layoffs, the utilities had proposed reading meters every other month and using estimated bills for the months when meters were not read. The Commission rejected this plan because estimated bills may create inaccuracies in calculating baseline usage and consumers will not be able to see the results of their conservation efforts.
PG&E and Edison have acknowledged to the Commission that cost savings from the layoffs will not materially improve their financial condition.
Today's decision permits PG&E and Edison to suspend certain maintenance and capital improvement projects at this time. Because the projects do not affect service and reliability at this time, the Commission is allowing the utilities to defer such projects. However, in response to concerns expressed by cities and counties regarding the suspension of undergrounding projects, the order invites such governmental entities to petition the Commission to require the resumption of such projects. ###
