A DRAFT workplace agreement produced by Essential Energy, which includes clauses allowing the immediately forcible sacking of 800 regional employees and an unlimited number of job cuts after June 2018, was rejected by workplace delegates from around the state at a meeting in Sydney on Thursday.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
More than 50 Essential Energy delegates, representing colleagues from workplaces and depots across NSW, met to examine the agreement which was provided to staff this week by management.
The proposed agreement strips employees of a range of conditions and outlines massive job cuts across rural and regional NSW, with clauses in the draft Essential Energy enterprise agreement seeking to: cut 800 full time jobs, using forced redundancies; allow unlimited job cuts from July 2018; deem all currently redeployed staff as “excess employees” and, if no position is immediately available for them, make them redundant; ban employees who have been made redundant from being re-employed by the company within two years, unless it is a casual or temporary job and has the CEOs approval; halve the amount workers are paid when they are called into work in emergencies, from a minimum of four hours pay to just two; remove requirements that when work is outsourced, the private contractors must pay appropriate wages and conditions; and implement a two year wage freeze.
The Electrical Trades Union and United Services Union, which represent Essential Energy workers, said the proposal was the latest in a series of savage cuts that threatened the NSW Government-owned electricity network’s ability to provide reliable and safe services to rural and regional NSW.
