Frontline Workers at CMP Insulted by Low Company Bonus

March 10, 2021 - Workers at Central Maine Power Company (CMP) are angry and disappointed by the decision of company officials to give an unusually low 1.4% annual bonus to their non-management employees. At the same time, CMP managers will receive a bonus payout of 8 – 9% of their annual pay.

As we reach the one-year anniversary of the pandemic, CMP’s lineworkers, clerks, dispatchers, customer service representatives and other unionized employees have continued doing their vitally important jobs providing electricity to Maine families and businesses. In the past year, more than 20 storms have led to outages affecting CMP’s customers and CMP’s frontline employees have worked around the clock restoring their power. At the same time, Maine’s largest utility has been saying that their financial condition is excellent, making this low bonus payout even more difficult to understand.

“Our Union members are proud to do the work that they do supporting Maine communities,” said IBEW Assistant Business Manager Renee Gilman. “We know CMP’s management says that they appreciate their employees but their actions speak louder than words. We hope that they will reconsider this insultingly low bonus payment and show their employees that they value them every bit as much as they do their management team.”

Members of IBEW Local 1837 at CMP comprise the largest bargaining unit of the local union, with more than 600 members represented. The contract covers field and support workers in the line departments, meter departments, substations departments, customer service representatives, area and systems dispatchers, engineers, programmers, communications center and field offices, GIS and CADD technicians, offices services personnel, technical services representatives, and a variety of other support personnel.

Collectively, these union members design, build, repair and maintain the electric grid serving the largest customer base of any electric utility in Maine and provide customer service assistance to residents and businesses in most of southern, central and western Maine. They also control the balance and flow of electricity across the grid beyond their own customer base into other parts of Maine and New England.