TVA lays off 106 employees; 550 leave voluntarily
KNOXVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Valley Authority issued layoff notices to 106 employees on Thursday and announced 550 employees have chosen to leave voluntarily.
TVA also said it will eliminate 281 contractor positions in the coming months.
The utility offered voluntary early retirement and buyout packages to some employees in February as part of efforts to prepare for industry deregulation by reducing expenses and paying down its more than $25 billion debt.
TVA said in financial filings last month that it aimed to eliminate 600 to 800 jobs overall, which would be the most significant reduction since cutting 2,400 jobs in 1994.
“This is part of a methodical process that was announced on Oct. 30 to TVA employees. The purpose is to ensure an operationally reliable, safe and financially flexible TVA so that TVA is strong for the future. That’s the reason we’re doing this,” TVA chairman Glenn McCullough said Thursday.
Not enough employees chose to take voluntary retirement or resignation in some areas TVA officials had hoped, and those departments were targeted for layoffs, officials said. Forty-seven of those employees are located at the public utility’s Knoxville headquarters.
TVA officials said they had not yet compiled a breakdown of the department or trades of the people laid off.
“It varies from each business unit in terms of staff reductions,” McCullough said.
TVA director Bill Baxter said after speaking at an environmental-economic conference in Chattanooga that no employee who got the bad news should have been totally surprised.
He said employees were aware of “surplus situations” in some areas.
Of the 3,247 TVA employees in Chattanooga, 42 were laid off and 234 voluntarily accepted the incentives.
The terminations represent only a fraction of the $247 million in cost-cutting moves; with several hundred employees retiring each year, management of attrition and hiring replacements will continue to need attention, Baxter said.
Employees being laid off will receive severance pay and retirement benefits, and TVA will help them find new jobs.
TVA has 13,181 regular employees, 2,500 contractors who supplement TVA’s work force in temporary jobs or specialized needs and 7,000 contractors at TVA’s nuclear and coal-fired plants.
Jim Springfield, a representative for the Chattanooga local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said he was not aware of any layoffs among trade or labor workers.
Representatives for unions covering engineers and clerical staff did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
Six TVA employees leaving work Thursday in Chattanooga said they had not heard any reaction to the announcements and didn’t know anyone who was displaced.
Meanwhile, the employees who decided to leave voluntarily will not be allowed to immediately return to TVA as contractors under a new policy to eliminate a revolving door practice, The Knoxville News Sentinel reported Thursday.
The policy prohibits employees who voluntarily retire from returning as a contractor for one year. Workers who voluntarily resign and receive incentives to do so may not return as a contractor for three years from the date they leave, said Paul LaPointe, TVA senior vice president of procurement.
The Knoxville-based agency supplies electricity to 8.3 million consumers in Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina.
———
Associated Press writer Bill Poovey in Chattanooga contributed to this report.
———
On the Net:
Tennessee Valley Authority: http://www.tva.gov