are you getting double time for ot and triple for holidays, or something like that? if your base pay is in line with non-union then you're on one of 2 ends of the spectrum...high demand or very low demand. i know some power plant union workers that are making way more money than their non-union counterparts. it's a coal plant, not nuke. and the power plant corporation wants to increase their rates due to "increased operating costs and increasing demand". the truth is the union was able to negotiate a really nice pay increase for their members and the power plant can't make as much of a profit for the shareholders. if they kicked the union out, they could lower operating costs dramatically but that will never happen.
i suppose a fair balance could be achieved, but it's highly unlikely.
You can't simply blame a unionized coal plant with higher operating cost on the union.. I understand it is easy to do.. The way Coal plants have operated is changing and not because of the workforce. Coal plants are now having to spend huge amounts of working capital in order to lower their emissions. Scrubber installation in order to clean the plant's effluent is rather expensive. This is happening all over the country. It comes down to clean the effluent, shutdown, or risk being sued by a state that the business might not even have a footprint in.. Not the unionized worker's fault..
The nations electrical grid is indeed seeing a rising demand and has for decades. A demand that will not go away unless the doomsday scenario happens.. As a rule of a free economy, end user's rates will go up. That is certainly not a unionized worker's fault.
As far as you know some union workers making far more than their non-union counterparts in a power house, that is very subjective based on word of mouth and personally I find it highly unlikely unless the difference is based on the cost of living from one area to another.. Power production entities typically have a area they provide with little direct competition. I could understand a plant worker in say California making more than a counterpart in Mississippi for example..
Perhaps you are correct about kicking out the union and lower operating cost.. But operating a power house involves more 'cost' than just the hourly salary of the workers.. Employee turnover can become expensive in a environment that the worker has to be trained to operate. Sure, some jobs you can hire anyone off the street for, but to operate in a safe cost effective manner, you want the folk that are pushing buttons and turning switches to understand what they are doing.. Anyone can close a main breaker to the grid but it takes a trained operator to know not to close the breaker 180deg out of phase costing the power house millions from just turning a switch.. How do you ensure a trained workforce and limit employee turnover? You pay them...
I don't know if you know I'm a operator at a nook plant or just happened on the subject.. It really doesn't matter.. A fair balance is not highly unlikely and my workforce is the proof.. We have different pay rates for OT.. 1.5x, 2x, 2.5x.. Our pay is based on the industry in our region. All part of our general agreement to work.. And we do work, very professionally I will add..
