Essential Energy employees will have the chance to vote on a replacement Enterprise Agreement through a management-initiated ballot in the next two weeks.
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Negotiations between Essential Energy, the unions and bargaining representatives began in April 2015 and to date, have been unable to secure a replacement Enterprise Agreement.
Tensions between the company and the Electrical Trades Union flared earlier this month, when the ETU announced an 80-hour long strike by its members at 120 workplaces across regional NSW. The protected industrial action will see union members walk off the job from 10pm on Monday, with no skeleton staff being left to cover power outages.
Based on feedback from employees, Essential Energy has decided to provide all employees covered by the current Enterprise Agreement with the opportunity to have their say via a management-initiated ballot.
"The ETU only represents approximately half of Essential Energy's workforce so the business felt it was appropriate to provide all employees with the opportunity to have their voice heard in the negotiations," acting chief executive officer Gary Humphreys said.
"Essential Energy seeks an agreement that meets the needs of employees, safeguards our excellent safety performance, is modern and flexible, contains costs to customers, and supports the business' objectives of running a safe, reliable, affordable network."
But ETU NSW secretary Steve Butler said Essential Energy is "a long way off" an agreement workers are likely to agree to.
"We'll be running a really strong 'no' campaign and there are a lot of reasons for workers to vote 'no'," Mr Butler said.
"Essential Energy will essentially become a contract manager and they will have very few permanent staff.
"Gary Humphreys has said he's agnostic about who does the work. His attempts to get this agreement changed shows... he wants to have as few permanent employees as possible.
"I believe that the threat that the company's got out there of cancelling the agreement... vote for this bad thing or something worse will happen down the track."
The management initiated ballot will start in the next two weeks with a result expected by mid-June.
