Laid off from PG&E.

What PG&E layoffs have meant for employees

PG&E's contractor and subcontractor workers outnumbered its regular employees as 2025 closed, by the count in the utility's 2025 Form 10-K. Under IBEW's 2022 physical agreement, before PG&E uses the agreement's lack-of-work provisions in a way that results in involuntary layoffs in the physical bargaining unit, it must first meet with the union and stop all use of contractors and hiring-hall workers, system-wide, in the affected department. If you're on a contract crew, it's worth asking your employer whether its PG&E work includes some of the reliability improvements, new customer connections or new energy supply connections that PG&E, in a September 11 explainer, said may take longer. Not knowing whether your next assignment survives a budget change is a hard way to plan a household.

For IBEW's physical unit, a cut comes as a sequence rather than a single notice. The same agreement gives as much notice as possible of a displacement and never less than 14 calendar days, and it lets you rank your options on an employee option form, which you can update until two days before a displacement starts, so it's worth checking that yours reflects where you'd actually go. If you don't file one, the agreement applies a default order that starts with the next lower classification and ends in layoff. Preference runs in order of service. If you're a regular employee under the physical agreement, were laid off for lack of work after at least a year of service and have been laid off no more than thirty months, Section 206.13 entitles you to preferential rehire based on company service, as long as you keep PG&E informed in writing of your mailing address, phone number and the bidding units or areas where you'd accept work. If a displacement notice comes, it's worth asking your union representative to walk through how your option form and your service were applied. PG&E's obligation to pay contract severance ends if you're rehired within 30 calendar days of the layoff, and if the contract's lump sum is part of what you're weighing, how COBRA works covers the COBRA coverage it's meant to partially offset. If ESC or SEIU represents you instead, the terms come from that union's own contract, and it's worth asking the union what that contract says about layoffs and severance.

PG&E's 2017 belt-tightening was a switch, as the San Francisco Chronicle put it, after four years in which the utility added roughly 3,000 employees; the deadly 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion had pushed it to beef up gas and safety operations. Training the person who'll do your job is a particular kind of hard, and in 2017, as KQED reported, some PG&E IT staff were doing exactly that. If you're outside PG&E's union contracts and a separation offer comes, it's worth asking for the written plan or policy behind it, how it was calculated and what benefits come with it, and negotiating severance covers what else is worth raising. If you're asked to train a replacement, it's worth asking for your end date in writing while you do it.

A buyout is another way PG&E has thinned its ranks, and unlike a layoff it hands you a decision. Each acceptance under the 2022 program, PG&E's 2022 Form 10-K notes, was irrevocable, so if a voluntary separation offer reaches you, it's worth setting its terms beside what an involuntary layoff would pay under your contract or plan while you decide. For an eligible employee covered by IBEW's physical agreement, that comparison starts with the agreement's severance formula.

If you're checking whether a notice reached your site, Pacific Gas and Electric Company is the name to look for in our WARN tracker, where every PG&E filing is a California one; if you're filing for unemployment in California, there's more on California unemployment benefits. PG&E expects to give updates on the review, its September 2 announcement said, during its quarterly earnings calls or when there are material developments.

A sourced history of PG&E layoffs

• December 2022, PG&E cut back its contract crews

  PG&E reduced its contractor ranks in recent weeks, saying the 2022 work plans they supported were done or nearly done and snow had halted vegetation work, and told ABC7 it was "not doing layoffs." It said it was hiring 150 vegetation management inspectors as employees.

• 2022, PG&E's voluntary separation program

  About 470 eligible employees agreed to leave under a voluntary separation program PG&E enacted in the second quarter, according to its 2022 Form 10-K.

• Early 2017, PG&E moves to offshore 70 IT jobs

  PG&E was offshoring 70 jobs it called routine IT work, a spokesperson told KQED, while in-house employees were training replacements from Tata Consultancy, some working in the U.S. on H-1B visas.

• January 2017, PG&E announces staff, officer and contractor cuts

  PG&E announced it would cut eight corporate officers, 390 staff members and 800 contractors and leave 500 noncritical openings unfilled, in measures the San Francisco Chronicle reported would save roughly $300 million a year.

• March 2001, regulators order PG&E to rescind service layoffs

  PG&E had laid off about 505 workers and planned 675 more if its cash flow situation wasn't resolved when the California Public Utilities Commission ordered it to rescind layoffs of staff needed to answer customer calls, read meters monthly, respond to outages and connect new customers.

What to do if you're laid off from PG&E

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. PG&E's biggest hubs: California. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what PG&E's hub states run: California, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.