TVA offers yet another round of early retirement incentives to trim staff

Tennessee Valley Authority's sign is seen at the downtown complex.
Tennessee Valley Authority's sign is seen at the downtown complex.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, which cut nearly 2,000 jobs over the past couple of years to trim its staff to an 81-year low, is looking for more staff reductions this summer.

TVA is offering another round of voluntary reduction-in-force incentives to about 2,700 employees who work in TVA's power operations division and its power shop services units. TVA is offering a week's pay for every year of employment to those who volunteer to retire or resign from the utility by the end of TVA's current fiscal year in September.

"This is really aimed at the fossil group so our employees know this is coming and can take advantage of this opportunity, if they choose," TVA President Bill Johnson said Monday. "We continue to retire some of our coal plants, and when you reduce line operations you also have to reduce staff support."

In a similar volunteer retirement incentive plan offered a year ago, more than 900 employees, including 194 in TVA's nuclear power program, agreed to resign or retire early. Another 1,000 job vacancies were not filled and a smaller number of workers were laid off.

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"TVA continues to assess and adapt its staffing levels to meet changing business needs and to best serve its mission of providing lower cost and reliable power, environmental stewardship and economic development," TVA spokeswoman Gail Rymer said. "TVA has not set any target number but is providing this opportunity for those employees who are ready to leave."

TVA plans to phase out 33 of the 59 coal units it once operated across the Tennessee Valley within the next couple of years. By 2033, TVA projects that coal will supply just 18 percent of TVA's power, down from more than 60 percent in the 1990s.

TVA has not disclosed a targeted number for the latest employment cuts it needs this year. But the agency is moving toward cutting $500 million in annual operating costs from its budget compared to what it was three years ago when Johnson came to TVA. TVA has cut nearly $400 million in such expenses already and is preparing to shutter coal units at Widows Creek, Colbert, Paradise, Allen and Johnsonville over the next three years.

"We will continue to look for cuts where we can in fiscal 2016 and 2017," Johnson told Tennessee's U.S. senators during a hearing here Monday on TVA's long-range power plans.

TVA's staff at the end of the first quarter has dropped to 10,900 employees -- down from 12,800 two years ago. TVA's staff is now at the lowest level since 1934, just a year after the federal utility was created.

At its peak, TVA employed 51,704 employees in 1980 when TVA was developing or building 17 nuclear reactors. All but seven of those proposed reactors have been scrapped or mothballed and TVA has since outsourced most of its construction and outage repair work to private contractors.

TVA is one of Chattanooga's largest and highest-paying major employers with an average annual pay of more than $70,000 per worker. More than 4,000 workers are employed at TVA's power headquarters downtown or at the nearby Sequoyah and Watts Bar nuclear plants.

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 757-6340.

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