CUE lobbies to prevent utility bankruptcy

The Coalition of California Utility Employees (CUE), which represents 35,000 employees at California’s investor-owned and municipal utilities, has urged the California legislature to prevent the threatened bankruptcy of SCE and PG&E. We warned them that if deregulation was a bad idea for California, utility bankruptcy is worse. They are threatening to turn a policy disaster into a genuine economic calamity.

Everyone, not just the utilities, shares some responsibility for the deregulation fiasco. Large industrial electric consumers were principal advocates for deregulation. Investor-owned utilities sold off power generating plants, moving the money out of the regulated utility and into other ventures. Unregulated power generators promised that deregulation would increase competition and lower prices, but then took advantage of shortages to gouge the public. Consumer groups, the media and utility unions (despite our misgivings) acquiesced to deregulation by supporting the legislative measure that brought it about, AB 1890.

Reliable service requires financially stable utilities employing a trained and dedicated utility workforce. This can be achieved only through sound public policy, not bankruptcy decrees.

We must craft a solution that shares the burden and preserves the State’s vibrant economy by assuring continued access to safe, reliable gas and electric service. The solution must contain these components:

· The investor-owned utilities must again become creditworthy, stable companies.
· The Governor must continue his leadership by pursuing a blend of power supplies at a just and reasonable cost.
· A state agency, not “the market,” must ensure an adequate power supply for California.
· Power plants financed by Californians should be dedicated to serving California first.
· Power plant maintenance procedures should be regulated and a state inspection and enforcement mechanism should be established.
· The utilities must have the resources to pursue an all-out effort for conservation and energy efficiency.
· The integrity of municipal utilities must be preserved as models of safe, affordable and reliable service. These utilities should not become guinea pigs for experiments with state ownership of transmission or other assets.
· In the event the energy crisis is not solved in the near future, the State should exercise its power of eminent domain to take control of power generating plants previously owned by the utilities as a way to force power generators to lower prices.
· The workers who build, operate and maintain our gas and electric infrastructure must be safeguarded as our most prized energy asset.

A reliable power supply must be our first priority.

Los Angeles voters will choose from a wide field of mayoral candidates April 10, but for working men and women there is a clear choice: Antonio Villaraigosa.

Antonio is one of us and has been associated with organized labor since his early career. He has worked with a number of local unions and was a member, steward, chief steward and president of AFGE, Local 3230. Not surprisingly, as State Assemblyman, he has been among our most consistent allies.

In hundreds of examples that never make the news, state legislatures, county boards of supervisors and city councils debate issues that impact the lives of working people. Should workplace safety codes be enforced, and what resources should be allocated for promoting workplace safety? How shall the government protect (or ignore) workers’ basic collective bargaining rights? On these and many other issues, we need people like Villaraigosa who have experience in and ties to the real world, who grew out of the movement to create and protect the opportunity for every working person to have a good life.

“I have a number of goals,” Villaraigosa wrote recently, “including making the City a more friendly, civil place for all people and a community where working men and women can raise their families in safety and prosperity.”

It is important, especially to members of LA’s public employee unions, to have a friend of labor as mayor of Los Angeles. But it is not enough that he be a friend of labor. Our city is faced with serious problems that threaten to become overwhelming. Secession movements threaten to tear us apart, while the school district and police departments face costly and demoralizing crises. We need a leader who has the experience and ability to meet these and other serious problems head on and help forge workable solutions. As a union activist and state legislator, Antonio has shown that he has what it takes. Nothing speaks more to this than the fact that his colleagues in the State Assembly elected him speaker.

But for all its problems, Los Angeles is a city with an amazing reservoir of talent, creativity and energy. It is a city faced with all the major challenges of the 21st century, and it is well-positioned to invent and implement the civic tools to ensure a better life for all. Because of this, the next mayor of Los Angeles must be a person of vision and compassion. That’s why we are enthusiastically endorsing Antonio Villaraigosa for Mayor of Los Angeles.

You can help elect Villaraigosa. Call Barry Poole or Gus Corona at the Union Hall. They will tell you how you can get involved in the campaign. If you care about the future of Los Angeles, I urge you to make the call. Or visit his campaign on the web at
www.villaraigosa.campaignoffice.com/.

In unity,

BRIAN D’ARCY, Business Manager