THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 10, 1996 TAG: 9601100414
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
Virginia Power, picking up in the new year on a theme that dominated 1995, said Tuesday it will eliminate 118 jobs at several plants, including 79 in its Yorktown Power Station.
In addition, the state's largest electric utility said that beginning next week it will notify about 40 administrative employees in Hampton Roads and northeastern North Carolina business offices that their jobs will be cut.
The latest reductions bring to nearly 1,000 the number of jobs cut or targeted for cuts by Virginia Power since it announced a sweeping cost-slashing reorganization last March.
Company officials said the reductions are necessary to keep electricity rates stable and help the utility fend off steadily increasing competition in the power industry. They said the cost-cutting process will likely lead to further job reductions at the utility, which now has about 10,500 employees.
But D.R. ``Cotton'' Sizemore, leader of the union representing many Virginia Power employees, said he was surprised by the scope of the latest cutbacks. The utility, he said, is cutting far more rapidly than is necessary.
Sizemore also sharply criticized a cash ``recognition award'' paid in December to about 45 Virginia Power employees who participated in ``re-engineering'' the utility's coal-fired, oil-fired and hydroelectric plants. That re-engineering resulted in the elimination of roughly 30 percent of the jobs at the affected plants.
William R. Cartwright, a Virginia Power senior vice president who oversees the plants, said it was unfortunate but necessary to cut so many jobs. ``I think we now have a good game plan and an excellent group of employees to follow it through,'' he said.
The utility will save between $55 million and $65 million a year in operating costs at the plants, Cartwright estimated. That equates to about a 30 percent cost reduction.
Of the eight power plants affected by the re-engineering, Yorktown was the hardest hit in percentage terms. The 79 jobs to be cut there are about 45 percent of the plant's work force. Also on Tuesday, Virginia Power said it will cut five of 24 jobs at hydroelectric facilities in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., 27 of 92 positions at a plant in Bath County, Va., and seven of 30 jobs at several combustion turbines.
Cartwright said Yorktown will be hit disproportionately hard because Virginia Power plans to downgrade the mission of one of the facility's three units. That unit, an oil-fired one, will be maintained to be available for operation only about two months a year, during summer and winter peaks, he said.
Ordinarily, it's now cheaper to buy electricity on the open market than run the unit to generate power, he explained.
Cartwright defended the cash incentives paid to Virginia Power employees, mainly supervisors, who participated in the re-engineering that he oversaw.
``We want to reward our people . . . when they do innovative, special jobs for us,'' he said.
Sizemore, a business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said the incentive ``makes neither rhyme nor reason,'' however.
He said four of his union's members who participated in the re-engineering were offered incentives of $3,000 or $4,000 each. But the union rejected them, he said. Union leaders don't believe members should be paid bonuses for helping plan the elimination of their fellow workers' jobs, he said.
Sizemore said the union plans to file charges shortly with the National Labor Relations Board that Virginia Power has violated its labor contract, particularly in the way it is reassigning jobs.
Bill Byrd, a Virginia Power spokesman, said the company doesn't believe it has violated the labor agreement in any way.
KEYWORDS: LAYOFFS by CNB