Hundreds of Southern California Edison planners, technicians file for union election

A group of planners, designers and field technicians at Southern California Edison on Thursday filed a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board.

The move jump-starts a long-simmering unionization effort that comes amid scrutiny of the electric utility for potential mishandling of the devastating Eaton fire.

Hundreds of workers are asking to be represented by the Engineers and Scientists of California Local 20, which is part of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.

Of the more than 1,100 eligible workers of the proposed bargaining unit, a “strong majority” have signed union authorization cards, ESC Local 20 said. It declined to disclose the number of cards signed.

Workers sent Edison management a letter Thursday morning notifying the company of their intent to unionize. Workers said they began organizing more than five years ago, but the effort was derailed when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“This has actually been years in the making. I’m excited we are one step closer to forming a union,” said Aaron Pearson, a planner who has worked at Edison for more than 20 years. “We just want a real voice at work. We feel a union would give us the power to protect what’s working, fix what’s not working and keep communities safe.”

Brian Leventhal, a Edison spokesperson, said the company knows that its “ability to deliver clean, safe and reliable power depends on providing a rewarding and respectful work environment and competitive compensation and benefits to all [its] employees.”

“We respect the right of our employees to vote in an election and decide for themselves whether to join a union,” Leventhal said. “We are encouraging all our employees to take the time to become educated and to vote on what they believe is in their own self-interest.”

A separate union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 47, already represents construction linemen who install and maintain the overhead distribution and transmission lines.

John Mader, president of ESC Local 20, urged the company to take a neutral approach to the union so that workers could eventually vote in an election “without interference or intimidation.”

“These workers provide an indispensable service to the people of California, and their right to come together collectively to improve their working conditions must be respected and protected,” Mader said in a statement.

While the cause of the Eaton fire — which killed 18 people and destroyed more than 9,000 structures in Altadena — remains under investigation, residents have filed several lawsuits blaming Edison for sparking the conflagration.

Edison International Chief Executive Pedro Pizarro said this month that the possibility an idle, unconnected Edison transmission line reenergized is “a leading hypothesis” for what sparked the fire.

The company announced recently that more than 150 miles of electrical lines damaged by the Palisades and Eaton fires will be replaced with underground lines in a years-long project.

Workers said that they were not authorized to speak about the company’s handling of the fire and that their motivation to join the union had not been influenced by the disaster and resulting scrutiny.

“Our job is to make sure we have a safe and reliable system. We are just excited to have a voice at the table in how we go forward,” said David Morasse, a planner at Edison for about 25 years.

Once an election is held and if a majority of the bargaining unit votes in favor, the group of workers will officially join ESC Local 20 and begin negotiating their first contract with Edison.