TVA Board mum on job cuts, approves $2.6B coal contract
CHATTANOOGA (AP) — One day after a deadline for a retirement incentive that aims to cut jobs before layoffs become necessary, Tennessee Valley Authority directors said Tuesday they could not say how many employees accepted the offer.
“We don’t know yet,” TVA Chairman Glenn McCullough said after a Tuesday meeting at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “This is a difficult process.”
McCullough and board members Bill Baxter and Skila Harris declined to say how many employees would have to accept the incentives for the nation’s largest public utility to cancel planned layoffs. Monday was the deadline for employees to accept the incentives.
Harris said discussions of cost-cutting options other than reducing TVA’s 13,400-employee payroll were continuing.
“All the program revisions haven’t been completed yet,” she said.
The utility offered one week of pay for every year worked beyond five years and two years of medical benefits.
The federal utility’s managers have until March 29 to accept or decline employee offers to accept the incentive. TVA has said it will issue 60-day termination notices on April 22, if they are needed.
TVA has said it wants to cut costs to reduce its $25 billion to $26 billion debt by up to $5 billion during the next decade and prepare for electric utility deregulation.
During Tuesday’s meeting, the board voted to spend up to $2.6 billion for a rail company to transport low-sulfur coal from Colorado, Utah and Wyoming to TVA plants.
The directors unanimously authorized the deal, which TVA spokesman John Moulton described as its “largest rail contract ever.”
Joe Bynum, the utility’s vice president of fossil power, said that compared to TVA’s cost for the rail service in 2003, the contract for Omaha, Neb.-based Union Pacific Railroad to transport low-sulfur coal would “save $10 million,” in the decade that starts Jan. 1.
Bynum said TVA is changing from a rail contract that traditionally has not exceeded five years.
At Baxter’s request, the directors delayed a vote on a $182 million supplement to a contract with G-UB-MK Constructors of Louisville, Tenn. The supplement would boost the contract to $974 million for modification and maintenance managers and craft laborers at TVA fossil fuel and hydroelectric generating plants.
Baxter said he wanted to first see a more detailed breakdown of the proposed supplement.
TVA provides electricity to 8.3 million consumers in Tennessee and parts of North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.
———
On the Net:
Tennessee Valley Authority: http://www.tva.gov