At one minute past midnight on July 4, about 1,600 PECO workers walked off the job - linemen, gas technicians, call-center staff, members of IBEW Local 614 - in the first strike in the utility's history [1]. Saturday's talks ended at nine that night with no deal, and bargaining resumed Sunday as the strike moved into a second day during a regional heat wave [5]. As it began, PECO described its offer in one phrase: "a strong, market-competitive proposal" [1].

The phrase is doing a lot of work, and it leaves the year PECO just had outside the frame. The utility's net income rose 47.7 percent in 2025, to 814 million dollars, up from 551 million the year before, after rate increases approved by state regulators - increases customers paid on their bills [3].

PECO net income
2024551 millions of dollars2025814 millions of dollars
PECO's profit rose 47.7 percent in one year, to 814 million dollars, after rate hikes. The workers who keep the lines up struck over a pension. [3]
Data
2024551 millions of dollars
2025814 millions of dollars

At the parent company, Exelon, chief executive Calvin Butler was paid 15.6 million dollars in total compensation for 2025, according to the company's proxy filing [4]. That is the backdrop against which the offer is being called market-competitive.

The workers' central grievance is not headline pay. It is a split down the middle of their own ranks. About 600 employees hired since 2021 do not get the defined-benefit pension their longer-tenured colleagues receive; they are put on a 401(k) the union calls poorly funded. Workers hired after 2014 lost eligibility for the retiree medical plan [2]. The company's offer, per the union, would raise wages roughly 20 percent over five years for field workers and 16 percent for call-center staff - but does not close the retirement gap that a 600-person slice of the workforce is striking over [2].

PECO is right that a 20 percent raise is a real number. What its one-line defense omits is the rest of the ledger: a near-50 percent profit jump, a 15.6 million dollar CEO, and a retirement system that gives newer workers less than the people working beside them. A proposal can be market-competitive on wages and still leave that split in place. The strike is over the split, and the phrase is built to talk around it.