Tampa Electric Co. and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers are tentatively scheduled to meet Tuesday to begin formal negotiations on a new contract.
The current three-year labor pact doesn't expire until March 31, but the union says the utility asked for an earlier-than-usual start to the talks. (A Tampa Electric spokesman declined to comment.)
Labor relations at Tampa Electric have been fairly uneventful. The union hasn't voted for a strike since the early 1970s, and recent contract negotiations went smoothly, according to Floyd Suggs, business manager of IBEW Local 108, which represents more than 1,100 employees out of Tampa Electric's work force of about 2,400.
The two sides will conduct talks, as they have for the previous three contracts, by using "mutual gains bargaining" techniques that strive to avoid some of the adversarial aspects of more traditional, tit-for-tat contract talks, Suggs says.
The big wild card is whether problems at Tampa Electric's parent, TECO Energy Inc., will affect what the utility offers its unionized workers. In the past year, TECO has tightened the screws on Tampa Electric, which remains relatively healthy, via layoffs of some nonunion employees and other measures.
Suggs says it's premature to tell what, if any, effect TECO's woes will have."I believe in going into negotiations with an open mind," he says.
