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Taking stock at All-Coms meeting The recent All Labor/Management Committees meeting was a good opportunity to take stock of where we are, what we have accomplished and what remains to be achieved. It is no coincidence that the first item on our agenda, Worker Safety, is being addressed independently by virtually every L/M committee. This is an area where the DWP does not excel, and where conscious, deliberate changes in the workplace and culture can and will yield significant results. The presence at the podium of Hal Lindsey, DWP’s new Corporate Safety Director, can be seen as a symbol of the progress we have made in this area and the company-wide commitment to improve this vital work aspect. This is a new high-level management position that came directly out of the L/M process. To promote a more effective culture of worker safety, we have developed three workshops that directly address workplace issues. To date, 569 employees have attended the Safety Principles and Leadership Skills workshop; 237 have taken the Worker Safety Group Implementation Skills workshop; and 53 have been to the Incident Prevention and Investigation Skills workshop. So we are developing a cadre of personnel, both supervisory and rank and file, who have the training and commitment to make the DWP a safe place to work. The next step is to establish an independent Safety Institute that will firmly establish these principles for the DWP and make sure that the commitment will not be based on the whims and vagaries of management. ANOTHER AREA in which input from the labor/management committees has had a dramatic and positive affect has been In-Basin Generation. Just a few years ago, management was telling us that In-Basin Generation would not be viable after deregulation went into effect. They spent millions of dollars on high-priced consultants who proved it and prepared untold numbers of charts and graphs to make their case. Valley Generating Station was shut down, and management seemed intent on selling it for scrap metal. We insisted on a special L/M committee to study the cost of production of the four in-basin plants. The committee and its subcommittees was comprised of station superintendents, top managers of the business unit, supervisors and rank-and-file members. Slowly, piece by piece, we challenged the assumptions that management had been promoting and the strategies that arose from them. We challenged management to rethink its marketing operation as well. The result is that today, we are marketing in-basin generation extremely successfully, and DWP General Manager David Freeman has said that our plan is to repower all four stations with combined cycle units to produce good, safe, environmentally sound power for decades to come. “The future looks bright for In-Basin Generation,” Enrique Martinez, head of the business unit, told the All-Coms meeting. THE WATER SYSTEM report was very interesting, since this is a business unit that is just getting started in the L/M process. They have only had functioning committees for about six months, but they have tremendous enthusiasm throughout the unit. The same is true in the Owens Valley. The Customer Service business unit is another one where the L/M process is well established and continues to prove its effectiveness on an ongoing, day-to-day basis. Reports were also given on the progress of LA Hydro, Substation Area, Service Reliability/Maintenance Guarantees and Priority Staffing. In these and other areas we can be proud that the Joint Labor/Management process initiated by the Union half a decade ago has had a profound, ongoing, positive impact on the nation’s largest public utility. |