Dive Summary:
- TVA, the biggest federal utility, has faced a major financial blockade as stagnant power sales, plant closings, and a Q1 revenue loss of $191 million wreak havoc on the business.
- Over the next several months, TVA will conduct a mass buyout, asking thousands of employees to consider retirement or resignation in return for a severance payment. "There is a lot of anxiety about what is going to happen, if not this year then the next year," said Gay Henson, the Valley-wide president of the local Engineering Association, representing 2,700 employees at TVA. "How we deal with the fossil plants being shut down is a pretty big hit to us."
- In May, the Knoxville, Tennessee-based TVA officially lost its largest industrial customer, the USEC Inc. gaseous diffusion plant, and demand for power has yet to return to pre-recession levels. Furthermore, emissions regulations have forced many TVA coal plants into retirement with nearly two dozen of its 59 coal units going idle or soon-to-be idle.
From the article:
... “Employees who work at TVA coal plants and in the utility's fossil engineering, environmental and support services are being offered one week's pay in severance for every year of employment if they leave TVA in coming months. A TVA employee in the affected work areas who decides to retire after 30 years would receive a lump sum payment of about seven months of pay.” ...
