<\/b>A leaked management briefing from NSW Government-owned electricity network business Ausgrid has revealed a plan to slash jobs, close local depots, axe apprenticeships, sell off state-of-the-art training facilities and outsource call centres in the lead up to the privatisation of the company.<\/p>\n
The three-phase plan, due to be rolled out during the next year, comes in addition to 1100 job cuts announced by the company earlier this month, which will come from workplaces in Sydney, the Central Coast, Newcastle and the Hunter Valley.<\/p>\n
The Electrical Trades Union said the NSW Government needed to urgently explain why Ausgrid was planning to make major cuts which appeared to directly breach promised protections for jobs, service levels, and apprentice numbers made before the election.<\/p>\n
“This deeply alarming document reveals Ausgrid management are looking to circumvent promised protections for services and jobs that were made before the election,” ETU assistant secretary\u00a0Dave McKinley said.<\/p>\n
“The management briefing outlines imminent plans for the axing of apprenticeships, the sale of training facilities, the closure of local depots, the outsourcing of their call centre\u00a0– likely offshore – along with reductions to inspections that currently guarantee safety and reliability.<\/p>\n
“The proposals come on top of 1,100 job losses, already revealed by Ausgrid earlier this month, that will see front-line power workers axed across Sydney, the Central Coast\u00a0and Newcastle before the end of the year.”<\/p>\n
Mr McKinley said thousands of jobs were at risk in what appeared to be an attempt to gut the company ahead of the planned sale of a 50.4 per cent stake in the company next year.<\/p>\n
“We fear Ausgrid is gutting jobs and services at the company prior to the Baird Government’s\u00a0electricity privatisation transaction next year, all in the hope of delivering a higher sale price,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This is exactly what happened in Victoria when the Kennett Government privatised electricity – safety\u00a0inspections were pushed out by years and maintenance slashed – resulting in the Black Saturday\u00a0bushfires that killed more than\u00a0100 people.<\/p>\n
“Outsourcing the operation of the network, including maintenance work, will\u00a0result in the public suffering more frequent and longer blackouts, as well as posing a risk to worker and public safety.<\/p>\n
“Mike Baird gave a commitment that there would be no forced redundancies,\u00a0that apprentices would have a future, and that workers would be given five year employment guarantees. They now appear to have\u00a0been hollow promises designed simply to get electricity privatisation through the\u00a0parliament.<\/p>\n
“Cross bench MPs, and in particular Fred Nile, must hold Ausgrid and the government to account and prevent their attempt to circumvent the job and service protections passed earlier this year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A leaked management briefing from NSW Government-owned electricity network business Ausgrid has revealed a plan to slash jobs, close local depots, axe apprenticeships, sell off state-of-the-art training facilities and outsource call centres in the lead up to the privatisation of the company. The three-phase plan, due to be rolled out during the next year, comes in addition to 1100 job<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/talknews.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/talknews.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/talknews.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talknews.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talknews.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/talknews.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/talknews.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talknews.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talknews.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}