Two unions representing workers at three FirstEnergy Solutions nuclear power plants have filed a court complaint alleging they’ve been excluded from a potentially lucrative bonus plan.
That bonus plan would reward about 1,000 nonunion employees at the three plants — including the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport — for staying on the job for the next three years despite looming shutdowns of the plants.
The problem, according to the 90-page court document filed jointly by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Utility Workers of America, is that the bonus plan was “explicitly designed” to exclude union workers while instead only “focusing on management, supervisors and superintendents” at the three plants.
The plan is “unfair and discriminatory,” the unions said in the court filing, because none of the 899 union employees at the three plants will receive any bonus payments for staying on the job instead of seeking employment elsewhere.
Not only are the union employees excluded, but the 1,019 nonunion employees included in the plan will get approximately $100,000 each for staying on the job, according to court documents. Those nonunion employees represent only 44 percent of the total workforce at the three plants.
“The debtors discriminate against the life blood of its workforce by compensating nearly all of its nonbargaining unit employees while including no plan to retain the bargaining unit employees who run the plants,” the court document read.
In addition, the unions allege it’s “undisputed” that the two unions were not consulted in any way when the bonus plan was being formulated, and that no explanation was given for why the unions weren’t included in negotiations.
“The debtors included almost every other possible interested party, except the unions,” according to the court filing.
The unions in the document ask the bankruptcy court to “approach the issue of retention in a holistic manner” instead of in a manner that excludes more than half of the employees at the plants.
“Piecemeal adoption of a retention plan for only 44 percent of the workforce, when the industry standard is to implement a retention plan for the entire workforce, is not justified by the facts and circumstances, nor is it even an exercise of sound business judgment,” the complaint reads.
The complaint, filed in a northern Ohio bankruptcy court, includes input from IBEW Local 29 in Pittsburgh. About 450 members of Local 29 work at the Beaver Valley plant.
Tom Mulligan, a spokesman for FirstEnergy Solutions, said the company wouldn’t offer any additional comment on the unions’ complaint.
“As has been our practice, we’re not commenting on events as they unfold in the Chapter 11 (bankruptcy) case but are letting our court filings speak for themselves,” he said.
A representative from IBEW in Pittsburgh did not comment on the lawsuit and passed The Times' request for comment to the national chapter of the organization. The national IBEW did not respond the request.