
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF / AP) — Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. Is looking for a decision’s approval to pay $235 million in bonuses to thousands of personnel in spite of the San Francisco-primarily based utility’s financial ruin. The cash is intended to offer incentives to workers and will now not be allotted if the business enterprise doesn’t meet the protection and financial desires, PG&E said in a court docket filing Wednesday. It said the bonus program has been restructured with its Chapter 11 case in thoughts and places an extra emphasis on protection performance. “In deliberately designing the plan this way, the debtors are sending a clear message to their personnel that the safety of the communities the debtors serve and of their personnel is of paramount concern in the course of the restructuring procedure and into the future,” attorneys for the utility said in court docket documents.
PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January in the face of billions of bucks in capability legal responsibility from considerable wildfires in California in 2017 and 2018, inclusive of the deadliest U.S. Wildfire in a century. That blaze in November 2018 killed 86 people and destroyed most of the town of Paradise. The utility scrapped its plan to pay $one hundred thirty million in bonuses for 2018, figuring out the payments were beside the point given the wildfires that year and the enterprise’s deteriorating fiscal scenario. Attorneys for wildfire victims had objected to the awards. A worker union argued that the selection turned into unfair to workers. The new bonus figure is for work in 2019. PG&E said bonuses have traditionally constituted 6 to 20 percent of personnel’ pay and taken their overall reimbursement “in step with the market and their friends within the application space.”