Colleagues, This afternoon Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced that he is issuing a stay-at-home order for the entire state, effective at 5 p.m. on Saturday and continuing until April 7 in order to limit the spread of COVID-19. This order requires all Illinois residents not providing essential services to stay at home as much as possible. Exceptions include going to the grocery store, visiting medical professionals and picking up medicine.

As providers of critical infrastructure and because of the importance of reliable energy to millions of families and businesses, ComEd personnel and our contractors are essential service providers and may travel freely through the state to perform our work. The Department of Homeland Security similarly has directed that electric utility personnel are critical service providers that should be exempted from stay-at-home orders.

As you know, we have been and will continue to scale back the work we do in response to this evolving situation. Already, here is what we have scaled back:

• Collections activities and disconnections. We temporarily suspended collections-related activities, including service disconnections, to lessen any financial hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. These policies will remain in effect at least until May 1, when we will evaluate their continued need.
• Non-essential planned electric outages – We know many individuals are working from home and children are home from school. We are limiting planned service interruptions during this time to only those temporary outages where service must be performed to preserve public safety and prevent extended, long-term outages.
• Energy efficiency on-premises services – We are temporarily suspending all energy efficiency service activities that require home or business visits, such as Quick Home Energy Check Ups and ENERGY STAR Audits.

In addition to these steps, all ComEd employees who can work at home have been doing so for the past week. We have worked with IT and other departments to provide the tools to help additional employees work from home, including increasing numbers of customer service representatives. We appreciate the excellent support of so many to help facilitate this transition.

It is clear that we will need to continue to scale back work over the course of the next few days. More details will follow, but our thinking is that we must focus on emergent along with planned work that is important to the safety and reliability of the system as well as work that does not involve risk of infection through significant human interaction. The situation is very fluid and we continue to adjust as we learn more. Unless you have been informed otherwise by your supervisor, please continue to report to your work location as usual.

We are working very closely with Local 15, which has been very engaged, on our shared goals of keeping our people and customers safe and delivering reliable service. We are working with them on the details and logistics for represented clerical members to work remotely. We have also reached an agreement for a stipend in lieu of furnished meals for represented employees who may be working extended days.

As always, all work will be done with the safety and health of our employees, contractors and customers as our top priority. If you will be working and need extra safety equipment, please work with your supervisor to get the equipment ordered.

We will be following up this communication with more detailed information over the next couple of days. We will have an all-hands call at 2 p.m. on Monday. Please watch for a meeting invite and an opportunity to submit questions in advance. In the meantime, thank you for all you’re doing to work safely, protect your health and provide reliable energy to our customers and communities at this critical time.

Sincerely,

Joe and Terry