Con Edison: The Problem? Not Workers… Look to Management.

The outcry over Con-Ed’s response — or lack thereof — to the widespread and prolonged power outages wrought by tropical storm Isaias reinforced one simple and easily comprehensible fact: Con-Edison owes its allegiance to investors looking to make a profit and not to the ratepayers that pay for the bloated salaries of Con-Ed’s senior management (John McAvoy — the current boss — took in a cool $8.9 million as compensation in 2019).

This misuse of bucks does give pause for thought.

After every windy storm that hits the New York metro area there’s much hair pulling about Con Ed’s failures; followed, quickly, by folks like McAvoy offering requisite mea culpas. After two storms that hit the area in early March, 2018, that left residents in the deep dark McAvoy’s knee jerk response was to blame “weather.”

McAvoy, at the time, rejected calls by Westchester County Executive George Latimer to resign. In response, he doubled down on a pledge to improve outage response times; also pledging to sharpen Con-Ed’s communication skills with ratepayers (including allegations that robocalls to customers indicated that power was on when it wasn’t)

McAvoy is once again in the “hot” seat being grilled about his failure to prep for Isaias; a storm that was clearly on the utilities radar screen…