Telecom CEO payment shows culture of greed

August 25, 2009
Media Release

Telecom CEO payment shows ‘shameless culture of greed’

The record $5 million payment to Telecom’s CEO Paul Reynolds at the same time hundreds of frontline Telecom workers are having their livelihoods and their work rights stripped from them shows Telecom is driven by shameless greed and a complete disregard for the network they’ve been entrusted with, says the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union.

The news of the record payment follows yesterday’s national strike by up to 1000 lines engineers around the country.

EPMU national secretary Andrew Little says the news of Reynolds’ payment could not be more insulting to the hundreds of highly skilled lines engineers whose lives are being turned upside down by Telecom’s attempt to force a vicious contract on them.

“Right now our members are being made redundant and Telecom is trying to force them into a situation which would see them lose all employment protections and have no guarantee of work or income.

“To see the CEO get a five million dollar slap on the back for doing this to frontline staff is an insult and a sign of a company that has developed a shameless culture of greed and management self-interest.

“Up until this point our members have shown a degree of goodwill including making sure that basic phone service was restored for Northland yesterday despite strike action. It’s hard to see how any of that goodwill can continue.

“Telecom has used its monopoly to gouge money from Kiwis while letting the network rot away, now they’re using their monopoly position to try to bully their skilled workforce into dire contracts despite the massive risk this poses to some of New Zealand’s most important infrastructure.

“To reward that kind of cowboy behaviour with a record CEO payment is corporate madness and frankly our members are done with it. It’s time for the government to step in.

“We’ll be ramping up action over the next two weeks. When the network falls over Telecom can deal with it, they’ve clearly got the money to do so.”

The EPMU represents 1500 Telecom workers nationwide including around 600 of the affected Auckland and Northland workers.

ENDS

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