Can the Citizens of LA Have Confidence that the DWP is Ready for Another Hot Summer?

That is the question being asked by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), who make up the vast majority of the DWP workers. They have stepped up the pressure this week on the DWP, to ensure that the DWP is prepared for the summer heat and able to respond to a major crisis.

For over a decade, DWP management has been reducing critical staff positions and neglecting routine maintenance. This has left DWP workers frustrated and angry. They are forced to work overtime to make up for staff shortages and then blamed because there is so much overtime. They are forced to use “band-aid” fixes on a system that badly needs real updating and repair. They know that the failure of management at the DWP to address longstanding problems means that the DWP is not ready for another heat wave, like the one that happened in 2006, let alone a major natural disaster or terrorist attack.

The IBEW workers have been highlighting this dangerous lack of preparedness in a series of press releases, direct activism and the production of a DVD exposing the problems at the DWP. They have been rewarded with a nasty editorial in the LA Daily News, attacking their activism. The paper does not disagree about the the problems at the DWP, but uses it to blame the workers for the problems.

But how about taking on some of the responsibility, maybe suggesting deferring workers' raises this year to hire more workers or turning down future raises so ratepayers don't have to take on another rate hike?

That would never happen because the union isn't really interested in the best interests of the public, just its own membership. So it's offensive for the union to wax moralistic about how unwisely the DWP spent its money when the union was endorsing those bad financial decisions all along.

It's time the IBEW started giving back to the city or the city started looking at alternatives to owning its own inefficient utility.

Aha! Now we know what the LA Daily News is really after, courtesy of that last line: privatization. That's not what voters want. They want the DWP they had in 1994. In 1994, the Northridge earthquake severely damaged the electrical and water infrastructure in Los Angeles. Despite the damage, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power workers swiftly restored safe drinking water and reliable power to the millions of Los Angeles residents who depend on them. The DWP won kudos from everyone for its swift and effective response of DWP workers to the disaster.

That would not be the case today. The DWP is just not prepared to respond to that type of crisis and the LADN admits it. It is the worst sort of cynicism to run a great public utility into the ground and then use that as an excuse to privatize it. What happened with the Enron scandal and the power crisis of the early 2000s proves that when private industry takes over, then ratepayers suffer.

As noted above, the salaries of DWP workers are higher largely because they are forced to work overtime due to the chronic understaffing. If the DWP was fully staffed, there would much much less need for overtime. And really, is the LADN literally asking that workers shoulder the cost of strengthening the system, rather than the consumers? Talk about ballsy. That will really work towards fixing the hiring crisis.

For more background on all of this, see the point by point response to a DPW press release, from which I grabbed some material for this post. Plus, the IBEW Local 18 press release. I am working on getting the DVD mentioned above into YouTube format and will get it up when I can.