•Whitby Free Proe, Wednesday, February 15, 1995, Page 17 CONSUMERS' REPORT: READ HOW WHITBY HYDRO MANAGEMENT WASTES YOUR MONEY Morning. Tom May, General Manager of Whitby Hydro, freshens up in his private washroom. Going into his office, he touches the button on his coffee table that turns it - Presto - into a desk. Fondling one of the especially-inscribed Whitby Hydro golf balls he looks lovingly across at the colour picture of the famous Whitby Hydro Double-The-Money-Half-Million-Buck Truck... HOW WHITBY HYDRO IS SPENDING YOUR MONEY. We're the Power Workers': the union that represents the people who do the actual work at Whitby Hydro. We climb the poles, repair the outages on Otter Creek, figure out why your light bulbs flicker every night... When we started as the union, we romised to report to the consumer how the money they pay on t eir hydro bills was being spent. Here's the report. It isn't good. THE "DOUBLE-THE-MONEY-HALF-MILLION-BUCK" TRUCK. Check the picture. What a truck! It's shiny. It's big. Add tinted glass, and it's every adolescent's fantasy. Whitby Hydro was the roud buyer. As one ofthe who paid for it, there are a few problems • The truck cost almost half-a-million dollars. For the same amount of money Whitby Hydro could have had two truc that would do the job. Waste figure: nearly $250,000. No wonder Hydros in Ajax, Pickering and Oshawa don' anything like it. • Ontario Government officials have ordered the truck be removed from the job. Problem? It's so big, it's a traffic h It's totally impractical for many Whitby streets. Vehicles w cost up to $250.000 less are called in to do the job. And they do it quite well.. • Some people have nick-named the truck "Too Tall". That's because "Too Tal" has the capacity to reach almost eight-and-a-half storeys - 20 feet over practically all the poles in Whitby. The few poles regular $150,000 trucks couldn't reach could be handled by renting a truck for a day. Which would save a bundle.1 IT'S NOT JUST WHITBY HYDRO'S TRUCK... Whitby Hydro has gone equipment-happy. tn addition to the cofFee table that goes u p-and-down at the touch of a button, here is what else bi ll payers have bought: • A mobile transformer. Beautiful. Cost? In excess of $20,000. Used once. Oshawa, Pickering and Ajax don't have one. And Whitby doesn't need one. • Whitby Hydro has another truck: the $172,000 "Won't-do-the-job" truck. It's a beaut: a '94 single bucket that does the same job as a truck costing $50,000 less. • Two new substations costing $1,750,000-each are being proposed. Neither is needed right now. • A pretty fleet of managment cars and trucks - whic management drive home in "in case they get o emergency call". Problem? Management can't fix a downed wire. And the people who need a Hydro vehicte at midni ht fast find that there isn't an emergency vehic e available. :ks t have azard. Yhich IT GOES ON. BOY DOES IT GO ON... • Whitby Hydro hires General Manager Tom May's daughter for the summer. What did your kids do for a job last summer? • Hydro poles which were new four years ago are being replaced. Do you replace your pressure-treated Fence every four years? Power Workers' in Whitby identified 20 cost-saving measures. Management has ignored them all... ASK SOMEBODY ON OTTER CREEK... How often their lights go out and their heating stops? Or ask someone on Lupin Drive or Michea lB oulevard.. While Whitby Hydro is spending on non-essentials, management isn't spending to pay for the essentials. Like getting power to people. There are underground power lines (Have one?) 20 and 25 years old that are rotting. But they're Shiny? You bet it's shiny. underground. Not shiny. And The extra shiny stuff added so they're getting no attention. thousands and thousands and . The si.tuation is dangerous. thousands to the bill. Anybody who buys extra chrome on a truck or a car knows how much "shiny" costs. And how practical it is. WE'RE READY TO GO ON STRIKE. FOR YOU. AND FOR US. "The Power Workers' is a union which realizes that jobs are only safe if the customer is satisfied. Whitby Hydro customers should not be satisfied. Their money is not being well-spent. And the people who do the real work know it. That's why we bought this ad. We believe the customers should be getting more reliable service. We want better working conditions - like better safety standards. Whitby Hydro must stop wasting your money. We have bills to pay and families to feed. We know how much the customers we serve everyday need us. But we will not tolerate management that is unfair to the customers and the people that work at Whitby Hydro. In the interest of Whitby Hydro customers and Whitby Hydro workers - we'il strike if that is what it takes te get things done the way they should be." JOHN MURPHY PRESIDENT, THE POWER WORKERS' UNION. POWER WORKERS P1~UNION CANADIAN UNION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEES, LOCAL 1000. Power Workers Turning a littie lIght on Whitby Hydro. Toronto (416) 481-4491 or 1-(800)-668-8PWU For more information call: in' FIRST IN A, SERIES