Wednesday, August 12, 2020
USPS centralizes leadership as step towards privatization and possible election fraud
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/11/usps-a11.html
By Shuvu Batta
11 August 2020
The United States Postal Service(USPS), under the leadership of Postmaster General, former logistics firm CEO and major Trump donor Louis DeJoy, announced an unprecedented restructuring of the organization’s top management.
The announcement comes after the July 10th memo signaling the privatization of the USPS; with the elimination of overtime and the conscious decision to delay mail, with “more to come.”
More indeed has come. After post offices around the country reported reduction of hours, the USPS released a statement on August 7th announcing the reassignment or displacement of 23 postal executives, including the two top officials in day to day operations. USPS's operations will also be consolidated into three “business operating units,” which are:
Retail and Delivery Operations, responsible for “accepting and delivering mail”
Logistics and Processing Operations, for processing and moving mail and packages to the delivery units
Commerce and Business Solutions, for leveraging “infrastructure to enable growth”
The full implications of the restructuring are not yet apparent; however, it is clear that this is a move to centralize authority for the operations of the USPS around DeJoy. DeJoy is a major Trump donor who has given over $2 million in campaign contributions. In the statement, USPS writes:
As part of the modified organizational structure, logistics and mail processing operations will report into the new Logistics and Processing Operations organization separate from existing area and district reporting structures. This includes all mail processing facilities and local transportation network offices. Splitting operations into these two organizations is designed to allow for improved focus and clear communication channels.
An institution founded during the American Revolution in 1775, predating even the Declaration of Independence, the United States Postal Service is responsible for key democratic functions. It has a government-mandated monopoly over the delivery of lettered mail, in part due to its responsibility to deliver mail-in ballots, helping ensure the right to vote for all US citizens. Under conditions of a devastating pandemic which has claimed the lives of over 162,000 people in the US and 728,000 globally, mail-in ballots will become the primary means of voting (if elections are even held).
The creation of a new Logistics and Processing Operations organization with separate reporting structures casts even further doubt on the integrity of the voting process. Trump has already made statements challenging the legitimacy of the mail-in balloting process and has repeatedly floated the possibility of postponing the election. But the attack on democratic rights is also being carried out in different ways by Trump's Democratic Party opponents, who have effectively denied third-party candidates the right to appear on the ballot in federal lawsuits filed in Michigan and California by the Socialist Equality Party.
In addition to the restructuring announcement, the Postal Service has put a management hiring freeze in place and is pushing early retirement from nonunion postal employees.
While the USPS management claims that it is instituting these changes to make the organization “more efficient,” reports around the country indicate otherwise.
The slashing of overtime, lowering of postal office hours, and decisions to delay mail have led to complaints being filed by residents around the country, with some reports indicating that people have had their mail delayed, often containing essential items like medicine, for weeks. Connecting Vets reported that nearly 100 veterans and caregivers, along with dozens of Veterans Administration employees, and others, confirmed that Postal Service issues are delaying veterans’ medications.
In addition, reports are coming in from Michigan, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. Mail carriers told the Philadelphia Inquirer that “they are overwhelmed, working long hours yet still unable to finish their routes. Offices are so short-staffed that when a carrier is out, a substitute is often not assigned to their route.”
“We don’t know who these people are. What is their experience in logistics and how the post office runs?" Ali, a postal worker, said to the World Socialist Web Site. "He just appointed three of his own people. Just like our president appointed him to slow and sabotage the mail vote in November. I guess time will tell. All these changes that he’s already done are hurting us so bad, especially delaying the express, which is the most profitable service we have. People will call and get their money back if we don’t deliver it on certain days. Or they will go to our competitors.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters Wednesday that he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had a “heated discussion” with the postmaster general over the recent developments. The meeting comes a day after the House Oversight and Reform Committee announced that DeJoy agreed to testify at a Sept. 17 hearing focused on USPS operations.
More than 130 members of the House, mostly Democrats, have signed on to a letter demanding measures in the final pandemic spending bill that would roll back the operational changes DeJoy instituted, and give the agency $25 billion in one-time funding. However, this proposal is dead on arrival, as it would never pass the Republican-controlled Senate and would be vetoed by Trump even if it were to pass.
The truth is that the drive to systematically defund and privatize the USPS is a bipartisan affair. Under Democratic President Bill Clinton, the USPS began contracting out services. Under Democratic President Barack Obama, the Postal Service shut down over 3,700 post offices around the country.
Moreover, the current Board of Governors of the USPS, as the WSWS recently reported, is composed of former corporate executives who are financial supporters of both parties, as well as former trade union advisers who support the Democratic Party. The two most recent appointees by the Trump administration, Donald M. Moak (a longtime Democratic Party donor and former executive council of AFL-CIO member) and William D. Zollars (a corporate executive whose private transportation firm YRC Global faces allegations of fraud) were unanimously approved by the Senate; the other members had strong bipartisan support as well.
Much of the leadership of the USPS has a direct financial incentive to privatize the Post Office. As a financial disclosure filed with the Office of Government Ethics revealed, the Postmaster General and his wife own between $30.1 Million and $75.3 Million in assets in USPS competitors or contractors.
Privatization of the USPS, as the experience in Europe and Japan demonstrates, would mean the elevation of shipping costs, reduced mail delivery access, and further degradation of working conditions and wages. A postal worker in Britain submitted a statement to the WSWS recently, pointing out that since privatization of the Royal Mail in 2013: "Parcel volumes are up 64 percent according to Royal Mail’s financial results, increasing the already heavy workload faced by postal workers. Royal Mail has given massive amounts of money to shareholders. In the last seven years since privatisation, the hedge funds and other significant shareholders controlling Royal Mail have extracted over £1 billion in dividends and other remunerations."
Since it was privatized, Royal Mail has increased the proportion of 20-to-25-hour contract jobs and has created a two-tier workforce. Privatization was made possible, the postal worker notes, through the conscious support of the British Postal Workers Trade Unions, the CWU. In the midst of COVID-19, the CWU called off strikes approved by over 94.5 percent of the members, even as it admitted that over 20,000 workers will eventually be let go.
For USPS workers, the unions have played a similar role, presiding over the reduction of over 300,000 full-time employees since 1999. During COVID-19, as management hides COVID-19 infections and deaths from workers and as privatization moves forward at full speed, the unions have done virtually nothing.
In defense of democratic rights, to halt privatization, and protect their safety, postal workers must break from their unions and the Democratic Party and take matters into their own hands by forming independent rank and file committees, as autoworkers have done. The World Socialist Web Site will offer support and guidance every step of the way.
“They have a multi-billion dollar corporation, and they work us to death”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/11/faur-a11.html
Indiana Faurecia workers denounce unsafe conditions, forced overtime
By Tim Rivers
11 August 2020
COVID-19 continues to rage unchecked through the vast network of parts plants that supply the auto industry in North America. Workers confront not only the deadly virus, but also a sinister conspiracy of silence enforced by the companies and the unions that prevents them from knowing where the contagion strikes.
A worker at the Faurecia factory in Columbus, Indiana, 45 miles south of the state capital Indianapolis, reported to the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter that a member of the cleaning crew responsible for maintaining sanitation at the facility had likely tested positive over the weekend and been sent home to quarantine for two weeks. The worst part is that workers in the plant are told nothing, and the company does next to nothing to protect them from infection. Production never stops.
“Nobody told us anything,” he said. “The plant wouldn’t tell us. So we had to find out about the virus by word of mouth.”
The Autoworker Rank-and-File Safety Committee Network, which has been organized to unify workers independently of the unions and the companies in opposition to the dangerous return to work, issued a statement on Monday, “Workers have a right to know about COVID-19 in their plants!” “Auto workers are being deprived of the most basic information about the spread of COVID-19 in their plants and workplaces,” it states. “We know the coronavirus is spreading in the factories, and the so-called safety measures aren’t stopping it. We see workers get sick on the line. We share what little information we can get using social media and word-of-mouth.”
“A couple dozen people at our plant that I know of have had the coronavirus,” the worker related. “Faurecia just doesn’t care. A lot of people have gotten hurt and are still getting hurt. OSHA [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] has told them no, but Faurecia expects us to lift fixtures that weigh anywhere from 25 to 50 pounds. If you get hurt, Faurecia insists that they are not responsible.”
The company has exploited the COVID-19 crisis to intensify the pressure on workers and the rate of their exploitation. “They laid off 50 people permanently and did not bring back over 200 others. Still they expect the same production from those of us that are left. They are basically asking for people to hurt themselves.”
At the end of March, the CARES Act passed unanimously by the Democrats and Republicans pumped $3 trillion into the stock market to support the market valuations of the major corporations and the accounts of the financial aristocracy who hold most of their shares.
“The government gave [Faurecia] money to keep employees, not to lay them off. Out of 200 lines they kept 22 running and those of us that were left had to work nonstop 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Faurecia put our families and everybody else at risk. They are really working us until we die. They do not care. They put on a big front, ‘We are for family.’ I know a dozen families that have split up because of that place. They literally do not give anybody time to do anything with their family.
“A lot of people can’t afford not to work, but they are forcing them to work 72 to 84 hours a week. The union does not help. It’s the IBEW [the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers].
“I don’t even have time off on Sunday. They said, ‘That’s not our problem.’ I think it’s a crime. We are grossly understaffed. They did not bring back over 200 people. It is tearing people apart, literally.”
The medical staff is a sham, the worker said. They are not there to care for the workers; on the contrary, they protect the company from the financial liability of inflicting physical damage on the workers. A young woman collapsed in the plant from heat exhaustion and the company doctors told her that it was the result of a pre-existing medical condition.
“My heart goes out to the workers in Mexico,” he said. “I heard about the death of a worker at a Faurecia plant there. They just moved the body to the side and never stopped the line. They are playing God.
“A woman in my plant had her shoulder pulled out of the socket. Her husband was working the same shift. They made her wait until the shift was over so that he could take her to the hospital. HR tried to lie to OSHA. But they had signed statements from witnesses. The company did get fined but not enough to bother Faurecia. Three thousand dollars is not much to them. What about her and her suffering?”
The fines OSHA does issue represent pocket change for a multi-billion dollar corporation which can appeal the fines and have them dropped anyway. There have been roughly 40,000 complaints of unsafe conditions during the COVID-19 crisis and, as of last week, only four citations have been issued by OSHA. Those will likely be appealed and reduced or dropped altogether.
“It is criminal the way they treat people. And they are getting away with it. Our manager comes in the plant thumping his chest, saying we are a multi-billion dollar company worldwide. They are getting rid of people, running 12 hour shifts seven days a week, so instead of having four people to insure, they can cut it down to two.”
With 122,000 employees in 2019, Faurecia was the ninth-largest automotive parts manufacturer in the world and the number one for vehicle interiors and emission control equipment, with €17.8 billion ($20.9 billion) in sales in 2019. One in three automobiles is equipped by Faurecia, and the transnational auto giant PSA Group, set to merge with Fiat Chrysler, owns a majority stake in the company.
“People are telling me they are so tired they’re starting to fall asleep on the way to work. When I was driving home the other day I had to get out of my car. I was just so exhausted. These are horrendous conditions that we are working under. They have a multi-billion-dollar corporation, and they work us to death.”
Another worker described the brutal process of harassment the company uses to force workers who have been injured to quit.
“I had fallen and they kept giving me harder and harder jobs to do,” he said. “They knew this one supervisor harassed me. He even came by my house and followed me around inside the plant. I told him to stop following me. A bunch of people quit. It is brutal. I have been through a lot. They hounded me, they were horrible to me.
“They could get more parts if they took away the lift assist. So they took it away even though it was backbreaking lifting those parts all day. It’s a nightmare. They took all the fans away.
“We know that Faurecia treated people poorly in different plants and in different countries. Once they used you up they want you to leave on your own. Once they’ve used up your physical ability and your psychological ability, then you’re worthless to them.
“The president of the local union admitted that he was behind me getting fired. He was a bully toward me in the interest of the company.”
“They spout in the news ‘thank you to health care heroes’ but what thanks do we get?”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/11/nurs-a11.html
US nurses’ poll shows appalling working conditions in the pandemic
By Julian James
11 August 2020
Results from a survey on workplace safety recently conducted by the National Nurses United (NNU) have shed light on the myriad dangers US nurses face on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. These appalling conditions are a result of chronic unpreparedness and the reckless actions of hospital administrators. The results were posted on the NNU website and include the following:
Only 24 percent of nurses think their employer is providing a safe workplace.
87 percent of nurses who work at hospitals reported reusing at least one piece of single-use PPE. Reusing single-use PPE is a dangerous practice that can increase exposures to nurses, other staff and to patients.
4 percent of nurses who work at hospitals say their employer has implemented a decontamination program to “clean” single-use PPE, such as N95 respirators, between uses. Decontamination of single-use PPE has not been proven to be safe nor effective.
Just 23 percent of nurses reported they have been tested for COVID-19. A lack of testing jeopardizes nurses’ health and safety and their ability to protect their patients and families.
36 percent of nurses who work at hospitals are afraid of catching COVID-19 and 43 percent are afraid of infecting a family member.
27 percent of nurses who work at hospitals reported that staffing has gotten much worse recently. Short staffing is unsafe for patients and nurses. The likelihood of patient death increases by 7 percent for every additional patient in the average nurse’s workload in the hospital.
These results, together with the testimony of thousands of workers, paint a picture of a health care system that is incapable of taking basic measures to protect its workers. In private Facebook groups, interviews and through polling, nurses across the country are testifying to the dire workplace conditions and scarcity of essential tools needed for fighting the pandemic, especially virus tests and personal protective equipment (PPE).
This shocking level of unpreparedness was evident in the early stages of the pandemic—when trucks full of bodies idled on the streets of New York and protesting nurses were forced to wear garbage bags instead of medical gowns—has continued into mid-August, five months after the Trump administration declared a national emergency.
Asked to comment on the recent poll results, two nurses who both work at small hospitals in Western Massachusetts related their own experiences, on the condition their names be changed to protect their identity. Their statements overwhelmingly confirm the NNU findings.
Speaking on PPE and testing, Maya, a nurse in her 30s with 15 years of experience, said:
“At the beginning of the pandemic, some staff had to wear trash bags as gowns and staple used masks together because they were falling apart. Now the hospital is “re-sterilizing” masks, not an approved thing at all.
“Before, you took off your mask as soon as you left the patient’s bedside, and if you needed to go back in you would put on another mask. Now suddenly it’s fine to reuse the same one for a whole week. People got sick from the ‘re-sterilized’ masks, didn’t feel well, had syncopal [fainting] episodes and were passing out. Massachusetts Nursing Association (MNA), our s*** union who claims to be all powerful, fought it so now it’s not ‘forced,’ but we’re still bullied into using them by management.
“As for testing, we attest to no symptoms every day, but there is no actual testing being done. And if we travel outside Massachusetts, we don’t fall under the same quarantine rules as others. They just want a hot body. They say as long as we’re symptom-free we are fine to work.”
Asked to expand on her opinion of the MNA, Maya said,
“They’ve been ineffective since I got there. The local people try but don’t get the backing of higher-ups in the union. So yeah, they’ve been horrible, and we pay over a grand a year in dues.
David, another nurse in his 30s working at a semi-rural hospital in Western Massachusetts, spoke about how conditions deteriorated at outset of the pandemic:
“We didn’t have access to rapid testing because it initially wasn’t available anywhere. The hospital wouldn’t transfer patients from the Emergency Department (ED) to other units until results came back, except for ICU cases and those needing to be moved to another facility. So, patients were backing up in the ED, which used to back up sometimes before the pandemic if there were no beds available, but this was happening on a totally new scale.
“We still don’t have rapid testing, although the turnaround time has recently improved a lot (6-8 hours now). So there has been an uptick in falls and other predictable bad outcomes because of the buildup of patients. And the hospital’s answer is always more paperwork, which we don’t have time to fill out because we are already scrambling to care for patients. This proliferation of paperwork was already endemic but continues to increase.”
David went on to speculate that requirements for ever greater documentation are likely an attempt by the hospital to reduce its liabilities for the increased dangers patients face in a short-staffed ED. In this case, workers who were unable to document their every step could be more easily scapegoated when something goes wrong, even if the failure were due to critical short-staffing.
The dangers of low nurse-to-patient ratios are well documented as mentioned on the survey results sheet released by the NNU, which stated: “The likelihood of patient death increases by 7 percent for every additional patient in the average nurse’s workload in the hospital.” Along with layoffs and wage freezes, maintaining woefully inadequate nurse-to-patient ratios is one of the main ways that hospitals, for-profit and “non-profit” alike, seek to boost their bottom line.
Perhaps most essential to hospital balance sheets are the so-called “elective procedures,” a category defined as any procedure that can be scheduled beforehand. In reality, these procedures are often critical, and cover a broad range of treatments, from hip-replacements to surgical removal of cancer cells. In normal times, these operations account for a huge share of the tens-of-billions of dollars in combined profits of hospitals in the US.
Revenues resulting from the treatment of COVID-19 patients pale in comparison. As a Reuters article from March pointed out, “Hospitals administrators say high-margin services, such as orthopedic and heart procedures, can account for up to 80 percent of revenue, while infectious disease and intensive respiratory treatments are less profitable.”
The connection between the COVID-19 pandemic, falling profits and deteriorating working conditions/job losses is something that health care workers on the front lines are acutely aware of. As Maya stated:
“Hospitals across the country are drowning in debt right now. They only make money from certain departments, and those were all shut down at the beginning of the pandemic. So now we get the cuts and the layoffs. My wages and retirement benefits are frozen for the foreseeable future, and despite all the wage and benefit freezing they did a $6 million rebranding. So, all they care about now is elective procedures and I guarantee there will be forced overtime once they get the okay to continue.”
Maya also provided a damning account of the reckless decision-making of hospital administrators, their hostility toward workers and how these factors are helping fuel the skyrocketing rates of depression, anxiety and nervous breakdowns being experienced by hospital staff throughout the US.
“When changes are made,” she said, “admin doesn’t tell staff and then acts confused as to why none of us are following the rules. At one point, we were pulled from our jobs and redeployed to critical care units after just one four-hour class and one day to shadow. No warning. Never asked if we were okay with it. It was just, ‘If you want your job, you’ll do what we say when we say it.’
“And they laughed in our faces when we asked about hazard pay. We are being treated like pawns and our lives very clearly matter to no one. They spout in the news ‘thank you to health care heroes’ but what thanks do we get? We are all at the max of our emotional and psychological wellbeing and most of us are also on psych meds and/or on leave because of this.”
This is the state of affairs under capitalism, a system in which the lives of health care workers, like other members of the working class, are only valued to the degree they can be made to produce profits for stockholders and executives.
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Deadly explosion in northwest Baltimore neighborhood injures dozens
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/11/balt-a11.html
By Nick Barrickman
11 August 2020
A massive blast in northwest Baltimore leveled row homes Monday morning in a residential area in what is a suspected gas explosion. The impact of the blast, which struck just before 10 a.m. local time, leveled three adjacent homes and severely damaged a fourth. An unnamed woman was pronounced dead and at least six others have been severely injured and are undergoing treatment in area hospitals.
The regional gas and electrical authority has ordered energy sources shut off to contain any further damage. Firefighters and first responders have been forced to sift through debris for survivors and belongings without the aid of heavy machinery.
“It was catastrophic. It was like a bomb, like you watch things in other countries where they have bombings and things like that. It was like watching that in real life,” stated local resident Dean Jones to reporters. “Telephone poles split, I mean, houses down the block, broken glass. When I initially got there, I could hear a voice just saying ‘Help,’ it’s crazy. It’s something I don’t ever wanna see ever again; I don’t want to relive it ever again.”
Multiple news sources reported young children and the elderly buried beneath rubble and debris. “I didn’t think, someone’s in there,” Jones said. “So we went and we just started digging. We started calling out, ‘Is anybody in here? If you’re in here, can you say something so we know that you’re here. Once they said it was a kid in there, I lost it. I got to get in here now. I just felt like, hey, what if it was me? I’m not a hero, I’m a human.”
Kevin Matthews, a neighborhood resident and building inspector for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), reported being knocked across his bedroom by the blast. Upon arriving at the scene, Matthews told the Baltimore Sun that he heard “shouting from children trapped: ‘Come get us! We’re stuck!’”
Area residents have provided an outpouring of support to the victims of the explosion. Caravans of goods, including bottled water to help with overheating in the early August sun, have been donated and stockpiled at the nearby shopping center. Counselors are at the scene to provide assistance for emotional trauma and area officials are looking into securing overnight housing for those who have lost their homes.
Officials for Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) have remained mute about the potential cause of the blast. A public statement released on Monday said that the source of the explosion was “currently unknown” and that gas and electricity for the neighborhood had been turned off. Once search and rescue efforts have been concluded, the corporation would work with the local fire department in order to determine the source of the explosion. “Customer-owned appliances and piping will also be investigated,” it said.
With air conditioning cut off alongside electricity, many residents have been reported wandering outside in the neighborhood.
BGE, the oldest utility company in the United States, supplies natural gas to the 680,000-person metropolitan Baltimore area as well as its outlying counties comprising nearly 1 million homes. It is a subsidiary of the Exelon Corporation, a top-grossing energy conglomerate that makes nearly $3 billion a year in profits. While the ultimate cause of the blast is still unclear, the gas piping system in Baltimore, as with other major industrial cities, is exceedingly outmoded and crisis-prone.
According to testimony taken earlier this year before the Maryland Public Service Commission and reported by the trade publication Engineering News-Record, “a BGE executive estimated that one-third of the utility’s gas distribution mains, one-quarter of its gas services and half of its transmission mains are more than 50 years old, with 15 percent of its gas distribution system made of ‘outmoded’ materials.”
Gas leaks have crept up in recent times, with the Sun reporting in 2019 that the number of gas leaks BGE reported grew from 5,500 in 2009 to a peak of 9,600 reported leaks in 2016. In 2017 and 2018 reported gas leaks were at more than 8,000. In 2013, the company introduced a pipeline improvement program which is geared to remove and replace old piping.
Commenting on this program, the Sun wrote, “In the Baltimore area, BGE needs to replace thousands of miles of obsolete pipes that already could be leaking. Though hundreds of workers are assigned to the task, at the rate BGE is going, the work will take at least two decades.”
Utilities currently charge individual customers cents on the dollar monthly to raise funds for new pipelines. BGE was able to spend $139 million on upgrades in 2018 through this method, a small fraction of its profits.
11 August 2020
A massive blast in northwest Baltimore leveled row homes Monday morning in a residential area in what is a suspected gas explosion. The impact of the blast, which struck just before 10 a.m. local time, leveled three adjacent homes and severely damaged a fourth. An unnamed woman was pronounced dead and at least six others have been severely injured and are undergoing treatment in area hospitals.
The regional gas and electrical authority has ordered energy sources shut off to contain any further damage. Firefighters and first responders have been forced to sift through debris for survivors and belongings without the aid of heavy machinery.
“It was catastrophic. It was like a bomb, like you watch things in other countries where they have bombings and things like that. It was like watching that in real life,” stated local resident Dean Jones to reporters. “Telephone poles split, I mean, houses down the block, broken glass. When I initially got there, I could hear a voice just saying ‘Help,’ it’s crazy. It’s something I don’t ever wanna see ever again; I don’t want to relive it ever again.”
Multiple news sources reported young children and the elderly buried beneath rubble and debris. “I didn’t think, someone’s in there,” Jones said. “So we went and we just started digging. We started calling out, ‘Is anybody in here? If you’re in here, can you say something so we know that you’re here. Once they said it was a kid in there, I lost it. I got to get in here now. I just felt like, hey, what if it was me? I’m not a hero, I’m a human.”
Kevin Matthews, a neighborhood resident and building inspector for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), reported being knocked across his bedroom by the blast. Upon arriving at the scene, Matthews told the Baltimore Sun that he heard “shouting from children trapped: ‘Come get us! We’re stuck!’”
Area residents have provided an outpouring of support to the victims of the explosion. Caravans of goods, including bottled water to help with overheating in the early August sun, have been donated and stockpiled at the nearby shopping center. Counselors are at the scene to provide assistance for emotional trauma and area officials are looking into securing overnight housing for those who have lost their homes.
Officials for Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) have remained mute about the potential cause of the blast. A public statement released on Monday said that the source of the explosion was “currently unknown” and that gas and electricity for the neighborhood had been turned off. Once search and rescue efforts have been concluded, the corporation would work with the local fire department in order to determine the source of the explosion. “Customer-owned appliances and piping will also be investigated,” it said.
With air conditioning cut off alongside electricity, many residents have been reported wandering outside in the neighborhood.
BGE, the oldest utility company in the United States, supplies natural gas to the 680,000-person metropolitan Baltimore area as well as its outlying counties comprising nearly 1 million homes. It is a subsidiary of the Exelon Corporation, a top-grossing energy conglomerate that makes nearly $3 billion a year in profits. While the ultimate cause of the blast is still unclear, the gas piping system in Baltimore, as with other major industrial cities, is exceedingly outmoded and crisis-prone.
According to testimony taken earlier this year before the Maryland Public Service Commission and reported by the trade publication Engineering News-Record, “a BGE executive estimated that one-third of the utility’s gas distribution mains, one-quarter of its gas services and half of its transmission mains are more than 50 years old, with 15 percent of its gas distribution system made of ‘outmoded’ materials.”
Gas leaks have crept up in recent times, with the Sun reporting in 2019 that the number of gas leaks BGE reported grew from 5,500 in 2009 to a peak of 9,600 reported leaks in 2016. In 2017 and 2018 reported gas leaks were at more than 8,000. In 2013, the company introduced a pipeline improvement program which is geared to remove and replace old piping.
Commenting on this program, the Sun wrote, “In the Baltimore area, BGE needs to replace thousands of miles of obsolete pipes that already could be leaking. Though hundreds of workers are assigned to the task, at the rate BGE is going, the work will take at least two decades.”
Utilities currently charge individual customers cents on the dollar monthly to raise funds for new pipelines. BGE was able to spend $139 million on upgrades in 2018 through this method, a small fraction of its profits.
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