Union workers protest Oregon Trail Electric labor dispute in Baker City

Union workers stood outside Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative’s Baker City headquarters on Tuesday, June 23, as contract talks and an unfair labor-practice dispute spilled into public view. The stakes reach well beyond the picket line: OTEC serves about 32,000 meters and nearly 60,000 residents across Baker, Grant, Harney and Union counties, including customers in the La Grande area, through more than 3,000 miles of overhead and underground lines.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 125 said about 40 employees across OTEC’s service territory are represented by the union. The dispute has centered on work rules and discipline involving line crews, including the case of La Grande lineman Tom Higgins, a 24-year employee whom the union says was terminated after a series of disciplinary issues. Nick Simons of La Grande also said another La Grande lineman, Tad McCrae, received disciplinary letters tied to standby-call expectations after hours.

At the core of the conflict is whether lineworkers must answer every call anywhere in the district without standby wages during the work week after hours. Union members say that expectation has created discipline problems when workers do not respond quickly enough. The union delivered notice on June 22 saying it intended to strike within 30 days if negotiations did not produce a deal, a step that would put pressure on outage response, line maintenance and emergency repair work across a largely rural system.

OTEC said on the morning of June 23 that it had not received a formal strike notice and that bargaining remained open. The cooperative has also stressed its role as a private, nonprofit utility owned by member-owners and governed by an elected board. It maintains a 24-hour outage hotline at 1-866-430-4265 and offers outage reporting through online accounts, services that underline how quickly members would feel any slowdown in line response.

The labor fight comes as OTEC is managing a period of expansion and structural change. On May 21, the cooperative filed with the Oregon Public Utility Commission seeking approval to transition ownership of Idaho Power’s Oregon distribution system to OTEC. On March 19, it announced a non-binding agreement to transition ownership of PacifiCorp’s Wallowa County service area.

For Union County members, the immediate concern is practical: whether a prolonged dispute could affect how fast crews reach broken lines, whether routine maintenance slips, and how much strain falls on a system that already covers long distances across four counties. Even without a strike, the public confrontation puts reliability, staffing and service continuity at the center of the conversation.