Essential staff vote on EBA "insult"
Staff at NSW’s Essential Energy will vote on industrial action this week, with reports up to 800 jobs will go in the next two years.
Essential Energy has put out its draft enterprise agreement, which includes a limit on the maximum number of possible redundancies, but it says that cap will be removed mid-2018.
The Electrical Trades Union says the new workplace agreement is an attack on employees’ job security.
“I think it's an insult to the members,” union spokesperson Neville Betts told ABC reporters.
“Largely the issues have come down to their ambitions to remove all these jobs out of the workplace.
“Our members are saying; ‘Look there are three things they want us to attempt to achieve and that is job security, no loss of conditions...and just a fair and reasonable pay increase’.”
Voting will start very soon, with the Australian Electoral Commission set to distribute ballot papers to members this week.
Staff will be presented with option including work stoppages, bans on overtime and paperwork.
Shots have been fired between unions and Essential Energy since an announcement in June 2015 that the company was getting ready to make hundreds of positions redundant.
Essential Energy says it was forced to axe the jobs after the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) reduced its limit on the amount of money Essential can recover from consumers.
But the AER is re-examining its decision after the Australian Competition Tribunal found errors in the way the AER made its ruling.
The ballot closes on March 22.