Hydro One fully prepared for Society of Energy Professionals strike

On June 1, Society staff at Hydro One's Ontario Grid Control Centre in Barrie, walked off the job. Unlike the recent one-day strike, the company has been told that this is a permanent strike that will soon escalate to a Province-wide strike.

"We have been prepared for this strike for several weeks," said Peter Gregg, Vice President of Corporate Communications. "This certainly isn't a surprise to us, we know that they have been planning this for some time now. This is why we initiated our strike contingency plan a few weeks ago and we are good to go for an extended strike of six months or more."

The Society has refused to negotiate on the company's key objective to reduce future wage, pension and benefits costs. Current Society salaries are more than 10% above industry standards with the top earner in 2004 making $182,000 and over 300 of their staff earned more than $100,000 last year.

Their benefits package is gold-plated by any industry benchmark with the following items standard: - $3000 for laser eye surgery; - Free prescription drugs with only a $20 deductible per year; - Private hospital rooms covered at 100%; - Dental care covered at 100%; - Physiotherapy covered at 100%; - Chiropractic covered to $650/year.; - Out-of-country travel insurance is completely covered, anywhere in the world;

"We fail to see how the company's desire to address these legitimate cost items are grounds for a strike," added Gregg. "The Society has been living in a dream world with country club tastes. Our customers pay for these costs and we cannot let these costs continue unchecked. Since the Society has decided to strike over this, our focus remains on running our system and doing our best to ensure that our customers see little to no impact related to the strike."