Workers at BC Hydro Among Most Productive in BC

August 19, 2011

Analysis of annual revenues and profits shows that Crown corporation compares favourably to private-sector, publicly-traded B.C. companies

Aug 19, 2011

BURNABY – A comparative analysis of revenues, profits and workforces at publicly-traded B.C. companies shows that employees at BC Hydro and Power Authority are among the most productive and profitable in British Columbia.

The Canadian Office and Professional Employees’ Union, Local 378, with data from the July/August 2011 edition of ‘The Top 1000’ — an annual listing published by The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business magazine — analysed more than 60 B.C. companies employing a minimum of 300 workers and with annual earnings in excess of $50 million.

MoveUP then performed a similar examination of BC Hydro, with information from the Crown corporation’s latest annual report.

The study shows that the average BC Hydro employee generated revenues of nearly $692,000 in fiscal 2010/11, with per-worker profits surpassing $101,000.

Those results put BC Hydro workers 10th out of 64 companies in terms of per-employee revenues, and 7th with regards to profitability.

“We were not surprised to see just how productive is each and every BC Hydro worker compared to their private-sector counterparts,” said David Black, President of MoveUP. “It’s something we’ve long suspected, but it’s nice to see it confirmed by a careful examination of the empirical evidence.”

Gwenne Farrell, MoveUP’s Vice-President, Utilities, said the findings should give pause to Christy Clark’s BC Liberal government, which recently released a study entitled Review of BC Hydro that recommended the dismissal of as many as 1,200 BC Hydro workers.

“The report commissioned by Christy Clark was deeply flawed and misleading,” said Farrell. “Our analysis shows that BC Hydro is one of the best-run and most-profitable companies in British Columbia — and that’s primarily because employees are experienced, hard-working and dedicated.”

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Tables below and in attachment.