According to one electric worker union official in California, just-resigned Connecticut Light & Power head Jeff Butler had a good relationship with workers on the West Coast.
“Jeff Butler was an operations-oriented executive, as contrasted with executives with a regulatory or financial focus. He is an engineer, grew up in a Pacific Gas & Electric (where Butler was employed prior to CL&P) family, and placed customers first, employees second,” Tom Dalzell, an official with California’s International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, wrote me earlier this week via email. “He had a strong relationship with the union, and strong relationships survive occasional fights. We had occasional fights and because of the underlying relationship emerged at the other end of the fights as strong as ever.”
Contrast Dalzell’s views with Frank Cirillo’s. Cirillo, an IBEW leader here in Connecticut, had plenty of positive things to say about Butler – his departure, that is.
Cirillo just told me CL&P employees are going nuts over today’s news Butler resigned amidst the criticism of the company’s handling of the October 29 snow storm and August’s Tropical Storm Irene.
“The texts, phone calls, the cheers of ‘yippee’ are just out there,” Cirillo said.
The union last year held a vote of no confidence in CL&P management.
“Let him go back to California. I wish him no ill will but I’m glad to see him leave the great state of Connecticut,” Cirillo told me.
I broke the news to Dalzell who had this to say:
“I am sorry to hear of Jeff’s resignation. He is hard-working and passionate about customer service and employee safety. I don’t want to second-guess the people of Connecticut, but they are losing a good man.”
Unions have diminished the ‘great state of CT’. Too bad we can’t get rid of some union leaders.