The Electrical Trades Unions claims Ergon Energy is pushing ahead with privatisation/outsourcing of some of its core functions despite the recent election result.
The union says Ergon is pushing ahead with plans to make eight workers, inviolved in pole-nailing, redundant.
Spokesman Stuart Traill said the actions were “contrary to the will of the Queensland people”.
“Here we have Ergon, a Government-owned company which is adamant that they will ignore the mandate given to the ALP a few weeks ago to end the privatisation of our electricity industry and instead they are pushing ahead with making eight workers redundant, it is an absolute disgrace and we will fight it all the way,” he said/
“Ergon will say it is cheaper to use contractors for the pole nailing function, however history shows us that whenever contractors have been used for core functions they have been far more expensive in the long run, the figures provided to the ETU by Ergon do not reflect the total cost of this work going to contract.
“This type of bullying behaviour was the hallmark of the previous LNP Government which saw 1780 jobs slashed across the public electricity industry in less than three years. We have written to Ergon today, seeking maintenance of the status quo until further talks on the issue can commence.”
The union gave Ergon a 3:00pm deadline today before it planned to lodge an injunction in the Federal Court to attempt to stop more industry jobs being lost.
