FirstEnergy Corp. to Cut 73 Jobs

FirstEnergy Corp. is not a name that many of you may have heard of in the past. After all, they do not make a lot of headlines, but they do employ a lot of people who rely on them each and every day to keep their families fed and a roof over their heads. For those of you who are not familiar with the company here is a look at how they have chosen to describe themselves, “FirstEnergy (NYSE: FE) is a diversified energy company dedicated to safety, reliability and operational excellence. Headquartered in Akron, Ohio, FirstEnergy includes one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric systems and a diverse generating fleet with a total capacity of nearly 23,000 megawatts….FirstEnergy’s 10 regulated distribution companies comprise one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric systems, based on serving 6 million customers in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions. Stretching from the Ohio-Indiana border to the New Jersey shore, the companies operate a vast infrastructure of more than 194,000 miles of distribution lines and are dedicated to providing customers with safe, reliable and responsive service.”

Well it looks like the company is hoping to do all of that without some of the workers it employs in Oregon. The company will be letting go 73 workers on Sept. 1, which leaves plenty of time to satisfy the qualifiers of a mass layoff action under the current federal guidelines. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” The company has not given any more information about the job cuts then this, and has not said if they are giving them any severance benefits.

Of course it is not only traditional power companies that are feeling the hit of the poor economic times. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage of cuts to an earth friendly power company that is facing similar job cuts, here is an excerpt from that coverage, “Green energy has been a bit of a hard sale in the last couple of years. As a serious decrease in the number of government subsidies has make production less inexpensive and the number of companies who are willing to take on new construction projects has decreased. Add that to increasing competition from companies in Asia and you can see how the market has changed… As the newest offering in the field of layoffs Solar World is going to be getting rid of about 300 workers. The jobs will be coming from workers in Europe. While that may not sound like a lot of jobs in absolute terms, you have to consider that the company only employs 2,700 so this is a significant percentage of workers.”