Reaching out to workers

With economic and security concerns mounting, William Cavanaugh has an added task: winning the trust of Florida Power's employees.

By STEVE HUETTEL

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 18, 2001

ST. PETERSBURG -- There are big issues on William Cavanaugh's plate.

The chief executive of Progress Energy has to worry about tightening security against terrorists at nuclear plants owned by his company's two electric utilities, Florida Power and Carolina Power & Light. A weak economy threatens earnings growth.

But as a visit Wednesday to the Paul L. Bartow power plant in St. Petersburg showed, the things that matter most to employees -- as pundits say about all politics -- are local.

Why didn't new uniforms proposed for power plant workers and linemen include T-shirts? Will retirement benefits change? And, as storeroom manager Earl Hairelson wanted to know, why do Florida Power workers get Veterans Day off and those at CP&L don't?

"I don't have a clue," replied Cavanaugh, who then promised Hairelson he'd find out.

Cavanaugh has been touring Florida Power facilities to chat up employees for more than a year, even before CP&L completed its $5.3-billion purchase of the local utility's parent, Florida Progress, last November.

Officially, he's promoting a company culture that stresses cutting through bureaucracy and a new diversity training program. Unofficially, he's trying to earn the trust of workers who blamed former bosses for selling Florida Power to an out-of-state utility about the same size as their own.

Cavanaugh visited Orlando area call center workers, linemen and operations employees Tuesday. Today he's scheduled to meet with employees at the Crystal River power plant.

His trip to Bartow, sandwiched between chats at Florida Power's St. Petersburg headquarters and the Clearwater call and operations center, was his first to the utility's second-smallest generating plant.

At an initial briefing, plant manager Tom Lawrey says there was at first some resistance to cultural changes. But workers are encouraged by new equipment, including air conditioned trucks, they're seeing at the 43-year-old plant on Weedon Island.

"Certainly, (management) didn't put money in during the last 10 years, and it caused some reliability issues," Lawrey says.

Florida Power offered to buy unionized linemen and plant workers $600 worth of uniforms -- including khakis, polo shirts, caps and jackets -- each year. Bartow employees voted for the uniforms, but the proposal was turned down by workers throughout the company.

Cavanaugh said there were a lot of misconceptions going around. Workers thought they'd be responsible for replacing damaged clothing, he said.

Jim Horner, a machinist, said employees wondered if they'd be reprimanded for wearing their own clothes while the uniforms were laundered. He asked why T-shirts, a staple for summer work in hot plants, weren't part of the package.

"We had a lot of questions they couldn't explain," Horner said.

Workers in the plant's control room asked about changes to retirement benefits. Unionized workers' benefits will be negotiated in contract talks, said Brenda Castonguay, Progress Energy's vice president of human resources. Other employees will move from a defined benefit pension into a cash balance plan starting Jan. 1.

Rick Leaperd, the control room's operations chief, wanted to know whether Cavanaugh had any more acquisitions in mind.

"If they don't want too much money for us to buy them," Cavanaugh responded.

Before he could elaborate, a buzzer went off indicating a problem with one of the plant's three oil-fired generators. A worker cursed, turned to her computer screen and directed co-workers to make adjustments to keep the unit from shutting down.

In an interview later, Cavanaugh said Florida Power and CP&L were seeing sharply lower power demand from industrial customers and slightly lower sales from commercial accounts. Residential sales are still growing, he said.

Progress Energy should be able to hit its target for 7 to 8 percent annual earnings growth for 2001, Cavanaugh said. But that might not be possible for next year, he said, depending how soon the economy turns around.

The company's three nuclear plants have been at their highest state of security since Sept. 11. Progress Energy is spending about $100,000 per week more on security than before the attacks, Cavanaugh said.

About 2:45 p.m. Wednesday, a worker at Florida Power's nuclear plant in Crystal River opened a package and noticed a "puff" of white powder, Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy said. Deputies cordoned off the area and contacted the hazardous materials team.

"This was an expected delivery," said Mac Harris, a Florida Power spokesman. "It was from one of our vendors we do business with. But when that was reported we chose to take a very conservative approach."

Employees were cleared out of the warehouse and the ventilation system was shut down to prevent any material from spreading in the air. Test results on the package were unavailable Wednesday evening.

-- Times staff writer Alex Leary contributed to this report. Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.

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