Now not the time for raises

At the April 10 City Council meeting, GWP employees showed up in numbers to state their request that the city recognize their bargaining unit, the IBEW, and give them the raises that they feel they deserve.

Back when the GWP employees voted to separate from the city’s union, the general manager of the GWP made no effort to try and convince his employees that they should not vote the IBEW as their representative. Now the council and the new city manager are faced with a situation that is going to be very hard to resolve.

Rate payers are not going to stand by and allow salaries to be increased — and rightly so. GWP has been investing in resources outside of Glendale and its own Grayson Power Plant is unreliable. If GWP employees decided to implement a work stoppage, all the outside resources are maintained and operated by the IBEW fellow members of the GWP employees. Grayson cannot generate enough power to handle city requirements. It is for this very reason that efforts should have been made to prevent this kind of arrangement from happening.

I question whether our city council fully understands the situation that GWP management allowed itself to get into. Someone needs to have a long talk with these employees and make them understand that now is not the time to be demanding salary increases, to appreciate what they have, and take very good care of their job and the place where they work. If they can do better somewhere else, then they can leave.

Larry Moorehouse

Glendale