October 15, 2013
The Electrical Trades Union is angry that financial reports show that Ergon Energy profits rose more than 25 per cent, to $434 million, at a time when more than 500 jobs were axed.
ETU State Organiser Stuart Traill said “cutbacks to capital expenditure and frontline skilled jobs to generate a false profit” could put communities and lives at risk.
“We know what happens when aged infrastructure is not maintained due to underfunding and job cuts, lives are lost,” he said.
“You only need to look at what happened back in February 2009 with the Victorian Black Saturday bushfires where underfunding and job cuts caused infrastructure failures that had direct impacts on the severity of the fires.”
The union said Ergon has slashed its full-time equivalent (FTE) workforce to 4435. It said the financial reports indicated a further 20 per cent cut in operational and capital expenditure would be implemented by 2015.
“While we have no problem with legitimate profit going back into State coffers to fund infrastructure and essential community services we have a major problem when profit increases are directly related to reductions in capital and operational expenditures and job cuts, while prices to consumers skyrocket,” Mr Traill said.
