National Pride National Greed

[BigClive]

None of these are the original technically minded companies they started off as. They are just large money grabbing corporations dominated by people motivated solely by personal wealth.

I don't know what the future of the electrical distribution industry is, but it won't be pretty and it won't be safe.

[Orgnizdlbr]

None of these are the original technically minded companies they started off as. They are just large money grabbing corporations dominated by people motivated solely by personal wealth.

I don't know what the future of the electrical distribution industry is, but it won't be pretty and it won't be safe.

Well said Clive, in the US every industry which has seen some form of deregulation has been motivated by wringing every last cent for profit by those who run the companies.

[BigClive]

So do the power systems just get more and more delapidated as time goes on? What happens when the sheer lack of maintenance and training of crew catches up with reality?

I'd guess the corporate management who caused the mess in the first place just lay themselves off with huge golden handshakes and leave the mess to the tax payer to sort out.

Every facet of society is being f*cked over by parasites. It would be nice to have a young government who held those responsible to account. But unfortunately they seem to own the government too.

Oh darn! It's making me go all ranty-politics again.

[australiantroubleman]

We went through lots of dereg stuff and where almost sold to multinationals about 9 yrs ago .
Same old story no maintenance no upgrades or augments unless the whole area is ready to collapse.

They split the company in two , one company owned the power infrastructure the other company owned the staff and liabilities . Had to invoice for everything you did, made lots of jobs for accountants but not for engineers or field workers.

Basically the system ran on its fat for about 4 years then started to collapse , poor voltage , overloads everywhere especially in summer with A/C loads .

No money for decent tools or equipment , threats of redundancies it sucked..

Then luckily the public started to revolt, experience with phone and water sell offs all ended in less service higher prices and loss of jobs .

So in the end they had to rebuild the industry basically lots of new infrastructure being installed new equipment , heaps of new staff , big pay rises to keep us in the industry it was a good turn around.

I agree once big money is involved customers workers and infrastructure suffers so shareholders make their dollars .

Eventually it will happen again here they are trying to sell the retail section of the company and the generation but keep transmission and distrubution in public ownership at this stage.

Im glad im in my final years of the industry the good times are in the past , i see a future of working for hire companies on contracts and good money harder to earn
.

[Orgnizdlbr]

So do the power systems just get more and more delapidated as time goes on? What happens when the sheer lack of maintenance and training of crew catches up with reality?

I'd guess the corporate management who caused the mess in the first place just lay themselves off with huge golden handshakes and leave the mess to the tax payer to sort out.

Every facet of society is being f*cked over by parasites. It would be nice to have a young government who held those responsible to account. But unfortunately they seem to own the government too.

Oh darn! It's making me go all ranty-politics again.

That's exactly what happens Clive, operate till it burns down, poles fall over, or the arms break in two from age.

Have a huge outage involving alot of territory and customers, have enough customers in an uproar and then the regulators step in because the public is all over the politicos ass, put money back in to rebuild, sometimes a bandaid approach to satify the regulators and start all over again.

The key today is aquire a company, wring out the dollars, send it to the fatherland, screw the workers, and give huge bonuses to the corporate officers.......their stealing Billions of $$$$

[CPOPE]

A National Grid executive who allegedly passed thousands of dollars in personal expenses on to ratepayers was promoted to the utility’s top post in the Bay State on the same day the company announced it was laying off 1,200 U.S. workers.

“It’s very troubling to see someone get a promotion for passing along her expenses to ratepayers while others got pink slips,” said Mark MacDonald, president of the New England Gas Workers Association. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Yesterday, Marcy Reed was named president of National Grid for Massachusetts in a major restructuring of U.S. operations.

Documents surfaced last summer that showed various National Grid execs expensed the cost of private-school tuition, medical bills and a trip to President Obama’s inauguration. Reed herself expensed items such as limo rides, snacks at Gillette Stadium, flowers and Dancing Deer cookies.

The expenses were uncovered last summer by Attorney General Martha Coakley after the utility sought Department of Public Utilities approval for a $106 million-a-year rate increase for the company’s 850,000 gas customers. DPU approved a $58 million increase, which has been appealed by Coakley’s office and is still pending.

Coakley’s office raised questions yesterday about the restructuring and called for the projected $200 million savings to be passed on to ratepayers.

“We have not been briefed on the specifics of the National Grid restructuring and are disappointed by the loss of jobs,’’ Coakley said in a statement. “We opposed a recent rate increase by National Grid, and will seek information on when National Grid knew about this restructuring and whether they factored it into their original rate proposal.”

Reed, who had been senior vice president for U.S. public affairs, yesterday defended her expenses and insisted they were passed on to National Grid shareholders, not ratepayers.

National Grid currently has 18,000 U.S. employees, a third of whom are in management positions. Thomas King, the utility’s U.S. president, said it was too soon to say exactly who would be laid off.