Con Ed Lockout

Today I went to support Con Ed workers as they protested outside CEO Kevin Burke’s house on 86^th street and York Avenue. These men and women are among the 8,500 workers that have been locked out since the beginning of July after failing to reach a fair and equitable contract with Con Ed. Now New York State must provide unemployment insurance to all 8,500 workers amounting to as much as $430 per week. When you do the math, that means every week, $3,655,000 of taxpayer money is being used for unemployment payments.

This brings us to a question that a lot have been asking; if all of the workers are locked out, who is doing their job? Con Ed is forcing managers to fill the empty jobs. Three managers have already been severely burned, demonstrating the danger in forcing managers to do jobs for which they likely do not have the proper training. According to the New York Post, Con Ed also has been hiding the locations of black outs from the press. By keeping people in the dark about this (no pun intended), Con Ed is endangering the lives of many citizens, especially those who need electricity the most.

As I walked to meet Benjamin Kallos, a candidate for city council representing District 5 at the protest, I was bombarded with flyers and handouts with the titles “Stop Rewarding (Power) Failure”, “Dump Con Ed CEO Kevin Burke”, and “Con Ed To New Yorkers: Drop Dead!” Spirits were high among the protesters who are resisting Con Ed’s efforts to divide the union on the issue of health care and pensions. I wormed my way through the crowd of people wearing Tee- shirts with the words “If we go out, the lights go out!” on the back, and finally met up with Ben.

Soon I joined in the protest and learned from one protester that:

We are not on strike. We have been locked out. Con Ed has locked 8,500 union employees out, which means that they are not bargaining in good faith for a contract so they have decided not to have us employed anymore. We are not on strike. We are protesting to get our jobs back. We want to go back to work. We want a contract.

Con Ed has made a new offer to the union, which it has released to the press today. However, the protesters were less than pleased that Con Ed seemed to be bargaining in public instead of at the bargaining table. They are hopeful of reaching a fair contract soon and of restoring “the integrity of the City’s power system”, as we all are.