After months of acrimonious bargaining with its unions, FirstEnergy Solutions convinced a bankruptcy judge on Friday to approve a $126 million bonus plan the company said it needs to encourage nuclear power plant employees to stay on the job until the company closes the plants in 2020 and 2021, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. Bankruptcy Judge Alan Koschik approved what the company described as a compromise that it reached with creditors and with three unions representing employees at the Perry nuclear power plant east of Cleveland, the Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Toledo and the Beaver Valley two-reactor plant near Pittsburgh. The company had initially submitted a $100 million bonus plan, which did not include bonuses for any unionized employees. A top FES executive, under oath, testified that it “just happened” that no union employees were chosen in the company’s original bonus plan. Judge Koschik threw out that plan after union lawyers argued it was an example of class discrimination and after the company could not answer critical questions from the court about how it chose each employee to receive a bonus.
