“The company’s proposal is worse than their original offer before the strike,” said Angel Perez, a collector who has worked for JCP&L for 12 years. Perez was one of nine workers on the picket line here in Morristown the day after the vote. The 3 percent pay raise they offered for each of the next three years does not even offset the steep increases in what workers will have to pay for medical under the proposed pact, he said.

Jeff Ecklof, vice president of IBEW Local 1298, one of the five locals on strike, said that the company is trying to gut work rules that require crews of two or three workers on certain dangerous jobs. Workers refer to the proposed, weaker rules as “widow-makers,” he said.

Workers also object to company demands that workers be “on call” outside of their regular work hours. Workers would not get paid for this time unless they were called in, but would be subject to disciplinary action if they were unreachable or unavailable. The company had already tried to impose this system in the months leading up to the strike. According to workers on the Morristown picket line, some 200 workers were suspended for “failure to cooperate.”

“The real problem is they don’t have enough workers,” Perez said. Ecklof added, “Ten years ago we had 3,000 workers, now we’re down to 1,300.”

John Jones, a service worker with 26 years at the company, pointed to a row of shiny-clean service trucks in the company parking lot. “They were so sure we’d approve their offer, they got the trucks all ready for work on Monday,” he said.

“The biggest mistake this company made was letting us go out on strike,” he added. “Now we all know each other and we’ll stand together even better when we do go back in.”  
 
 
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