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BWL union members get $500 to extend contract

August 24, 2020

Due to ongoing COVID-19 concerns, the Board of Water and Light and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 352 have agree to extend the current contract one year, until November 2021. Members employed on  November 1 will get a $500 lump sum "grossed up, so that employees receive the full $500 amount after taxes are deducted." It's all in a memorandum of understanding signed August 4.

Not only did BWL workers not lose their jobs due to the coronavirus; they get a $500 bonus.

There seems to be a long-standing policy among Lansing city leaders to take good care of the IBEW members at the BWL. When general manager Joe Pandy was fired in 2002, it was because - according to a September 12, 2002 story in the Lansing State Journal - the board of commissioners were unhappy with his relationship with employees. He'd frozen the salaries of more than 100 employees and fought a unionization campaign. Pandy sued and settled with the BWL for $730,000.

Pandy was replaced by Sanford Novak. Novak was fired in 2006, at least partly due to IBEW dissatisfaction. His buyout was $250,000. From the LSJ, September 11, 2006:

When J. Peter Lark was hired as general manager in 2007, he fired three high-level managers on his first day. In an anonymous letter decrying his action, the writer said "You may have pleased the mayor and some union members . . ." and "It is a sad day when people look out for their own political gain instead of doing the job they were hired or appointed to do."

In an August 19 editorial in the Lansing City Pulse, Berl Schwartz says this about 14-year Board of Commissioners member Sandra Zerkle's reappointment:

 

Keeping Zerkle in place is a nod to the utility's employee union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which has considerable influence over appointments to the BWL commission. Although there are no designated seats on the BWL board . . . it is widely understood but generally unspoken that Zerkle, who worked for the AFL-CIO for more than a decade, represents organized labor on the panel. Not surprisingly, politicians frequently bend to the wishes of powerful interest groups like labor unions in the hopes that their allegiance will be rewarded with endorsements and campaign cash.

Former Mayor Virg Bernero received $18,600 in campaign contributions from BWL employees and their spouses over his 8 years in office:

Current mayor Andy Schor has received $14,000 from the IBEW PAC, which also contributed to other candidates:

The above contribution information was obtained by downloading the IBEW PAC's campaign "expenditures" from the Secretary of State's website and it reveals an error. Note the 2 contributions in 2019 to Andy Schor for the office of STATE REPRESENTATIVE 068. Those contributions should have been to his mayoral campaign, and they don't show up on the campaign finance report Schor submitted to the county clerk. I called it to his attention and he is going to fix it.

BWL employees also contribute to Schor's 527 account:

2008 and 2019 BWL employee payroll lists

You may have noticed that there are a lot of lists on this website. Today's list subject is payroll for the Lansing Board of Water and Light. In fact, the first lists I published on this site were for the BWL' s 2008 payroll. Here they are:

Employees whose 2008 earnings exceeded their salaries by $2000 or more

All 727 employees, sorted alphabetically

All 727 employees, sorted by salary

The story that accompanied those lists is here.

Just this month, I obtained a file from the BWL that contained 2019 payroll data. The file listed 693 employees. I sorted it in various sequences and created 6 lists:

Name

Responsible Area and Job

Salary

OT-Prems-AdtlPay (overtime, premiums and additional pay)

IVP (individual variable pay)

TotSal (the sum of Salary, OT-Prems-AdtlPay and IVP)

The story that accompanied the above lists is here.

The following lists were created by comparing the 2008 payroll with the 2019 payroll.

Employees on the 2019 payroll who were not on the 2008 payroll (there were 336 of them)

Employees on the 2008 payroll who were not on the 2019 payroll (there were 373 of them)

Employees who were on both the 2008 and 2019 payroll (there were 356 of them; this lists shows how much their salaries increased in those 11 years)

Some of the figures in the 2019 payroll information are questionable. I wanted total earnings for 2019, but TotSal seems to be the sum of salary, overtime, premiums, additional pay and individual variable pay, which would make it a meaningless figure. Instead of salary, it should include actual regular earnings, a figure I asked for but was not provided. Also, since the lowest TotSal reported was $48,925, the report seems to exclude employees who worked only part of the year. I asked about this and was told by M. Denise Griffin, Corporate Secretary on behalf of and with permission of David Price, BWL Board of Commissioners’ Chairperson, that "The BWL has provided the records you requested in accordance with the [Freedom of Information] Act and its obligations have therefore been satisfied." This and an earlier statement by Assistant FOIA Coordinator Elissa McDaniels that "FOIA does not require a public body to answer questions" makes it clear that the BWL is going to reveal as little as possible about employee compensation.

Here are my earlier BWL stories:

7/24/2020 - FOIA does not require a public body to answer questions

7/31/2020 - Beware of the Board of Water and Light

8/14/2020 - 2019 BWL employee wages...and some questions

Send comments, questions, and tips to stevenrharry@gmail.com or call or text me at 517-730-2638. If you'd like to be notified by email when I post a new story, let me know.

Other previous stories