Nashville Electric Service is facing criticism after multiple union members and contractors report the utility refused help from available linemen, as more than 100,000 outages remain in freezing temperatures throughout the Nashville area.
Two members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, who asked to remain unnamed, say NES declined offers of assistance from multiple union crews, potentially opting for less expensive contractors instead.
“I’ve had a lot of people reach out trying to come to Nashville to help restore power,” the union member said. “They keep getting the same answer- that NES is full and doesn’t need help... I just don’t think they want to pay the union rates.”
FOX 17 News uncovered on Monday, the third day after the storm,
NES began work with significantly fewer linemen in the field (less than 300) than neighboring Middle Tennessee Electric, which had 200,000 fewer outages at the storm's peak- 150 fewer linemen.
As of Tuesday, NES reported some 700 linemen in the field.
With potentially a quarter of a million people without power in Nashville, some argue additional crews are urgently needed to restore power- and heat- during dangerously cold conditions, regardless of the company or union.
Another IBEW member from out-of-state, who asked not to be identified, said thousands of union linemen were potentially available after getting released from North Carolina, where they were originially staged, which didn't suffer as intense a storm.
He said he was part of roughly
18,000 linemen who were then sent home, or to other areas. But he said Nashville appeared not to be on that list. Instead, he is now working with Middle Tennessee Electric, which has significantly fewer outages than NES.
“Why are we 10 minutes down the road with 2,000 outages when we could be 15 minutes to Nashville and help out with more than 200 broken poles?” he said. “Union or non-union, they could bring in way more people... You think they would put all hands on deck, and flood that city with linemen and just get everything turned on as fast as they can."
FOX 17 News asked the worker if he believed 700 lineworkers was enough?
"That's no not at all not even close. I'm sorry... I think a minimum of 2,000... I mean,
North Carolina had 18,000 of a stage."
NES was asked directly during a press briefing Tuesday, whether it had refused assistance.
“As far as we know, no,” NES representative Brent Baker said. “We are sticking to the path of bringing on the crews that we have partnered with and through the mutual aid... NES currently has crews from Florida, Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi and states across the United States and especially the region. As we continue to scale up and grow the workforce, we were accepting workforce from all of those agreements. We had already mutual aid as a more speedy way to get some of our folks here, as well as the contracts we already had. So we had people en route."
FOX 17 News' Kelly Avellino emailed NES asking which crews, if any, had been turned away, why that decision was made, and whether unions were involved. We haven't received a direct response, as of this publication.
Meanwhile, a community group has
launched a petition calling on NES to hire any available linemen, saying more workers are needed than the approximately 700 currently deployed.
“People are already in temperatures in the 30s, and it’s going to be single digits again,” said Cecilia Prado of the Nashville People Power Committee. “People are going to die.”
A national representative for IBEW responded to Fox 17 News' inquiry in an email after two days of researching the issue, "Sounds like there are a bunch of our folks on the way or there working already now, but I’m not able to confirm numbers," said Matt Spence.
FOX 17 News has also received numerous comments on social media from viewers reporting similar accounts of NES allegedly declining help from contractors and union crews. We also reached out to all
NES Board members, but have not yet heard back.
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