Federal Mediator Summoned to NSTAR and UWUA Local 369 Contract Negotiations

Two weeks ago members of the Utility Workers Union of America Local 369 have already voted to authorize leadership to call a strike against NSTAR over critical healthcare, retirement, wage, life insurance and working condition issues, according to a press release from the union.

After nearly two months of negotiations, NSTAR is attempting to shift healthcare costs onto workers and reduce short term disability coverage and sick days while eliminating life insurance for older workers, according to the release.

These cuts come at a time when NSTAR is under fire for using 40-year-old equipment in Boston – equipment that has caused two major outages. And NSTAR is attempting to nickel and dime workers even as executives prepare to make millions in bonuses for merging the company with Northeast Utilities.

“They will make millions and still they want to take life insurance, healthcare and pay raises from the men and women who actually do the work. It is outrageous that the company would come to the table with such an anti-worker proposal,” said UWUA President Dan Hurley. “They can’t keep the lights on in Boston because they won’t spend money on new equipment, even using a decade old transformer from Brighton, to replace the blown transformer in the Back Bay, sort of like transformer shell games.” 

Hurley called on regulators at the State House, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and “all those residents and businesses in the Back Bay who lost service because of NSTAR” to tell NSTAR executives to bargain fairly and back-off on the workforce crackdown.

As part of the recent NSTAR-Northeast Utilities merger deal, NSTAR agreed to a wildly expensive $1.6 billion price tag to purchase Cape Wind power. Utility leaders expressed concern that NSTAR is now seeking worker concessions on healthcare, retirement and working conditions as a way to offset the massive costs of the merger deal.

“After paying nearly one billion over market value for Cape Wind and raking in additional millions of dollars in executive bonuses, it’s ridiculous that NSTAR is asking the people who do the hard work to pay the bills,” said Hurley. “Our answer is ‘no.’ The quality and safety of our workers and the communities is our number one concern.  Now that we know that NSTAR can afford this expensive merger we expect that they will treat our hardworking employees and the communities who rely on electricity  fairly.”