December 29, 2006

Lights Out for PSE
Labor accuses private utility of supporting poverty-level wages

By ADAM HYLA
Editor

The lights were still out in more than 100,000 Western Washington homes when a giant rat and a repulsive fat cat appeared in front of the corporate headquarters of one of the utilities responsible for restoring the power. And while the assembled crowd was classic labor — boots, sweatshirts, union-labelled baseball caps, leaflets — and the cause was poorly paid workers, there had to be among the honks of support from passing Bellevue drivers at least a few people who were still angry about having to sit home in the dark.

The inflatable rat and the diamond ring–wearing cat were outside the Bellevue headquarters of Puget Sound Energy, the state’s largest private utility, and they were accompanied by union supporters from the bricklayers and laborers unions. Participants weren’t talking about the power outage on this gray Dec. 20; they were there to voice concern over the poorly paid flaggers and pavement workers in the employ of PSE’s subcontractors.

While some non-union concrete and pavement workers are making $13 to $15 an hour with benefits, Ben Freitag of Washington State Jobs with Justice says others are hired on at $8.25 hourly. Even if benefits are offered, he says, the workers can ill afford them. These workers often act as flaggers at job sites, run by by K and D Services or Comforce, two local businesses who frequently work for PSE and telecommunications companies like Qwest.

Comforce and K and D refused to comment.

Puget Sound Energy could make their subcontractors pay better, says Freitag, especially since the utility’s stock dividends increased by eight cents a share in the past year.

“We want some of that [profit] for low-wage, poverty-level workers,” said Freitag.

The utility’s natural gas rates have climbed in each of the last four years, with them spiking by 33 percent in 2003, notes a JwJ flier. Rates most recently increased by 8.8 percent on Nov. 1. The utility, the largest natural-gas provider in the state, has 638,000 customers in King, Snohomish, Pierce, Thurston, Lewis, and Kittitas counties, according to the state’s Utilities and Transportation Commission, which approved the rate hikes.

Jobs with Justice hasn’t made an attempt to contact PSE staff to talk over their subcontracting, says Frietag. This was the group’s first public action against the company, but it wasn’t put together as a result of the storm, he said. “We got this started in late November,” he said.

Still, the context incurred some interesting interactions. A passerby pointed to the generators pumping air into the inflatables and castigated the protesters. “They should give these to the people who don’t have power, instead of doing something that doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

Puget Sound Energy officials were likewise distracted. “We’re up to our eyeballs in storm stuff, so we can’t comment on this at all,” said spokesperson Dennis Smedsrud. “Our attention’s been focused on getting our customers’ power back on.”