Essential Energy is “holding a gun to the head of its entire workforce”, a union claimed after voting for strike action against plans to end a workplace agreement.
Electrical Trades Union members on Tuesday voted to take industrial action against the New South Wales government-owned electricity distributor, which has applied to the Fair Work Commission to terminate its 2013 enterprise agreement, along with policies protecting staff from forced redundancies.
Unions say the move will expose thousands of workers to possible forced redundancies and threatens to drop pay to the award rate.
In the ETU ballot 95% of workers voted in favour of work stoppages of up to 72 hours, and 96% in favour of bans on a range of work practices, including overtime and training.
The ETU secretary, Steve Butler, said: “Essential Energy management are holding a gun to the head of their entire workforce, telling them to voluntarily accept cuts to their pay and conditions or face an unprecedented legal move that would see workplace agreements and policies simply torn up.
“The result of this ballot shows workers simply won’t accept that kind of treatment, and they are ready and willing to take industrial action and other forms of protest until Essential Energy reverses course and returns to the bargaining table.”
Scott McNamara, the energy manager at United Services Union, said: “If Essential Energy succeeds in having the existing workplace agreement torn up, thousands of jobs could be cut across NSW, while wages and conditions for the remaining workforce would be slashed”.
“This is an unprecedented attack by a publicly owned organisation on its own workers,” he said.
Essential Energy has 150 employees, whom the company is obliged to keep and try to redeploy because they have refused to take voluntary redundancy.
The Electrical Trades Union and United Services Union are concerned those staff will be sacked immediately if the company’s application is successful.
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