NSW electricity network to axe thousands of jobs

The Electrical Trade Union and United Services Union are up in arms after electricity networks Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy and Essential Energy have revealed plans to make over 2700 jobs redundant from September this year. Worse still, the companies are only giving staff one week to consider the proposal.

The draft redundancy policies show no concern or respect for loyal staff of the three companies. Employees who wish to keep working but are forced to take redundancy will suffer most with lower severance packages being offered to them than those who take voluntary redundancy.

ETU secretary Steve Butler said that this scheme would force staff to take voluntary redundancy.

“It means long serving staff who want to remain in their job risk losing tens of thousands of dollars, essentially forcing people to ‘volunteer’ for redundancy – whether or not they want to leave – or risk being jobless and thousands of dollars out of pocket,” he said.

There is no word yet from Premier Mike Baird as to whether he will allow the plan to go ahead or not. 

Read the media release