As union workers at Central Maine Power contemplate going on strike, Pete Cummings from South Paris got it right in his letter, “Rethink The Strike,” June 22, when he said that that “CMP linemen do difficult and dangerous work, often at night, and in the most horrific weather Maine can and does dish out.” But he goes on to suggest that the public won’t have much sympathy for them because — in his words — they’re “well paid for this.”

It takes many hundreds of hours of overtime for lineworkers to get that pay — and they’ve earned every penny of it. Yet Cummings seems to be unaware that the overwhelming majority of workers at CMP are not lineworkers and don’t earn that much money.

One thing we all have in common though is a sense that it is unfair for CMP — a company that raked in a $55 million profit last year and sent it to Spain — to take advantage of the economic downturn by trying to cut health care and retirement benefits for their employees, especially when CMP officers and executives enjoy exorbitant compensation by comparison. They seem to think that a $55 million profit isn’t enough.

We think the public agrees with us that the time for that kind of corporate greed has come and gone.

Barry L. Ripley, Gray

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