Pepco may face strike; union likely to reject contract offer D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) blasted the commission, noting that the increase Maryland regulators recently approved was smaller. "I just believe they are lap dogs for Pepco," said Cheh, who represents upper Northwest Washington, where residents have endured several prolonged outages over the past three years. They really missed an opportunity to improve Pepco's reliability. Amid widespread consumer resentment over service shortfalls and outages after last summer's derecho storm, Pepco must now contend with the possibility that much of its workforce could soon walk out. Voting by the 1,100-member union - including overhead line personnel, clerks, cable splicers and warehouse workers - was happening at seven sites across the region during the day. The results were expected to be tallied in the evening. In a recent message to members, union leaders called the contract "the worst proposal this local has faced in its entire history." International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1900 President James A. Griffin said he expected members to reject it. "I'm expecting a resounding no," Griffin said in an interview Wednesday. If Pepco maintains its position after the vote, the union's next step would be to poll its members on authorizing a strike, Griffin said. Council member Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4) said she is concerned that a potential strike could hamper ongoing efforts to improve Pepco's service. "They have a lot of people out in the street, installing new poles, new wires and transformers, and I would hope there wouldn't be any disruption to that work," said Bowser, who represents an area of the city where many neighborhoods do not have buried power lines. We have seen the positive impact of that work, and we don't want to see it disrupted. Pepco officials said that they are prepared for such an event and that customers would not notice any changes: Managers and contractors would fill in for workers, when necessary. In the event of a major storm, Pepco could call in workers from neighboring utilities. "Over the past several months, we have trained management employees from across Pepco Holdings to operate the Pepco system," the company said in a statement. Field personnel would be replaced by qualified and experienced field personnel. . . . If power outages were extensive, we would continue our normal process of requesting mutual assistance crews. A strike against Pepco Holdings two years ago by 900 workers for Delmarva Power, a subsidiary serving Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, lasted 12 days, the company said.