PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 PECO workers took a first step Saturday night towards a potential strike as 94% of voting members sided in favor of a strike authorization amid ongoing contract negotiations with the utility giant.<\/p>\n
IBEW Local 614 said over 1,000 members voted on the strike authorization Saturday.<\/p>\n
Workers who maintain PECO’s electrical and natural gas system have been without a contract since April 1 and said they’ve seen little progress in negotiations since January.<\/p>\n
Larry Anastasi, the president and business manager of the union, rallied Saturday in Plymouth Meeting with local elected officials and over a hundred workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat they\u2019ll remember is that we stood together. The best relationships are not built with money,\u201d Anastasi said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re formed when you show up when people need you. We always show up when PECO needs us, and they\u2019re not showing up for our workers.\u201d <\/p>\n
Workers are fighting for better wages, retirement, and health benefits. Joy Rodriguez is a customer service representative with PECO and a business agent with Local 614.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether it\u2019s today, tomorrow, a month from now, or longer, my colleagues and I will be here fighting for what we deserve until the company comes to the table and agrees to treat us fairly moving forward,\u201d Rodriguez said. <\/p>\n
A strike by PECO workers would be the first in the company’s history.<\/p>\n
A PECO spokesperson told KYW Newsradio that the company is prepared should a work stoppage happen, and customers do not need to worry about any service interruptions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 PECO workers took a first step Saturday night towards a potential strike as 94%…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[12560,90946,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-206984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-peco","tag-peco-strike","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}