TVA supplies electricity to 8.3 million consumers in Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina.

The Knoxville-based agency has been trimming its work force incrementally for years. TVA had more than 34,000 employees in 1989 when it decided to cut its staff and turn over most of its construction activities to contractors. Since then, TVA has cut its own staff by nearly two-thirds. TVA's last major incentive-loaded layoff, in 1994, eliminated 2,600 employees. Last month, more than 43 percent of the 23,578 workers at TVA were employed by contractors. TVA spokesman Gil Francis said most of the 10,331 contract workers were involved in short-term assignments. Nearly half were working on either restart activities at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Athens, Ala., or the installation of selective catalytic reduction devices to cut emissions at coal plants. "It just makes economic sense," said Paul LaPointe, TVA's senior vice president of procurement. "Most large utilities are doing the same thing because you don't want to hire a permanent employee for a job that goes away in a few weeks or months."