Laid off Telecom workers protest AGM - EPMU

October 1, 2009
Media Release

Laid off Telecom workers protest AGM - EPMU

Around 250 redundant Telecom lines engineers and supporters protested outside the Telecom AGM this morning calling on the company to fix the mess caused by its dependent contracting model.

The protest marked the official final change over of the Auckland Northland network contract to Telecom’s new contractor Visionstream – a changeover that is failing workers and Telecom customers alike.

EPMU national secretary Andrew Little says Visionstream’s model has been discredited and Telecom must now look at other options.

“The reality is Visionstream hasn’t achieved a successful transition in the time they said they would and if they’re honest they will admit they are not able to recruit all the personnel they need on the terms they are offering.

“Visionstream was supposed to be running a fleet of dependent contractors by now but instead they are patching over the cracks by contracting work out, by delaying some hand-over and by letting the wait times for faults blow out. It’s failed.

“Even line engineers who have signed up to the Visionstream contract are telling us it is not working for them It is less than they were promised.

“We didn’t think the dependent contractor model was viable before and we don’t think it is viable now. Telecom needs to bite the bullet and discuss alternatives with us.

“Right now there are over a thousand faults in Northland and people have been without phones for weeks because of Visionstream’s failure to offer decent waged employment to lines engineers. It’s time for Telecom to listen.”

The EPMU represents 45,000 working New Zealanders including nearly 1,000 telecommunications lines engineers.

ENDS

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