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October 17, 2012
There’s no word as yet whether today’s announcement of 500 job losses at Ergon Energy will affect the five depots in the South Burnett, but local employees are worried.
An Electrical Trades Union spokesman told southburnett.com.au the union was trying to find out where the losses were coming from but so far had been unsuccessful.
However the union believes frontline positions, including linesmen, had been axed.
A local Ergon Energy employee said this morning’s news came as a shock, and he was angry he and his colleagues had learned about it first from the media rather then from management.
There are more than 50 employees based at Ergon’s five local depots: Kingaroy (28), Proston (3), Murgon (11), Yarraman (6) and Kilkivan (6).
The worker said this level of staffing was necessary to maintain continuous shifts for the public’s safety and to ensure quick restoration of power.
He could understand there may be a need to reduce some contractors from the system but he feared that offering redundancies to full-time staff would only encourage some of Ergon’s best and most skilled workers to leave, with devastating consequences for the electricity network.
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Sunshine Coast/Wide Bay ETU organiser Dan Bessell said the union would be opposing any redundancies because they meant a position would be gone and never re-filled.
“We’ve just got the electricity network working well. We don’t want to go back to a point where we are having blackouts,” he said.
Mr Bessell said the news of the job losses wasn’t a total surprise: “I suppose we knew it was coming when we saw Campbell Newman’s slash and burn campaign,” he said.
But he was surprised that it was targeting highly skilled, frontline workers.
He said any job losses would hurt smaller areas.
“The regions don’t need this. Ergon is a good employer in the regions. The loss of any jobs will have a trickle down effect in these areas,” he said.
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The Ergon Energy Board is believed to be looking to make Budget savings of between 10 and 15 per cent across the organisation, including savings of about $1.5 billion from its works plan.
The Operations business unit is looking to reduce employee numbers by about 150 by June 30 plus significant reductions in labour hire.
However, Ergon Energy would continue with its 2013 intake of apprentices.
Employees in positions identified during a review would be offered redundancies but there would be no forced redundancies for employees.
The first stage of targeted position reductions (97 positions) would be achieved by the end of this year with a second stage (61 positions) to be completed by June 30.
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ETU State Secretary Peter Simpson said the continuing “slash and burn” approach across the electricity sector would leave Queenslanders exposed to blackouts and maintenance cuts.
“The cuts to front line staff such as linesmen, electricians, cable jointers and supervisory staff are bad enough, but coupled with the massive reduction in the apprentice intake and retention of many graduating apprentices we will see this vital, publicly owned sector go back to the bad old days of 2004-05,” he said.
“In that summer storm season consumers in the South-East went without power for days, in some cases weeks, due to poor maintenance and lack of suitably skilled staff.
“We have spent the past eight years negotiating better maintenance regimes (following the damning Sommerville review that followed the 2004-05 storm season) and rebuilding the industry’s workforce, through the attraction of tradespersons from other States and boosting apprentice intakes.
“We’ve spent eight years attracting these highly skilled people into the Queensland industry and now by the stroke of a poisoned pen the government is now telling them that their services are no longer required? It beggars belief.”
Mr Simpson said the Ergon Energy job losses when added to those at Stanwell Corporation last week and Energex earlier this year meant about 1100 highly skilled staff in the electricity industry would lose their jobs between now and next June.
“Newman cannot hide behind the respective Boards of these Government-Owned Corporations any longer. It is his Ministers that are calling the shots, not his so-called Independent Boards,” he said.
“Newman has cut the guts out of this State through his recent cuts to the public service. The general public will not want to see the very people they rely upon during natural disasters and summer storms being treated this way.”
UPDATE October 18: An ETU spokesman said he believed 100 jobs had been ear-marked for the Wide Bay area, including 20-30 frontline positions such as linesmen, electricians and cable jointers. “It’s early days as yet so we don’t know exactly where these jobs are, but any redundancies in the smaller depots would be devastating,” he said.
UPDATE November 16: southburnett.com.au has been told two job positions have been targeted in the South Burnett: a power worker in Kingaroy and a linesman position at Proston.
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