Quit the dirty tricks & get to the table, Telecom

Media Release

Quit the dirty tricks, Telecom, and get to the table to fix this mess - EPMU

The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union has called on the Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Steven Joyce, to organise a meeting between the union, Telecom and its new contractor, Visionstream, to fix the problems the telecommunications company has caused in Auckland and Northland.

The call comes as redundant lines engineers continue to refuse to sign into dependent contractor arrangements, outages grow and protesting workers discover they have been spied on by the company.

EPMU national secretary Andrew Little says Telecom needs to quit its dirty tricks campaign and negotiate a fair deal for its lines engineers.

“Telecom started out with a radical proposal for network maintenance for Auckland and Northland but didn’t consult with the very people who would be most affected by the change and so implementation has been an unmitigated disaster.

“The situation now is Telecom has hundreds of customers still waiting for faults to be fixed, businesses losing revenue and hundreds of lines engineers keen to work but who Telecom insists go on contracts that saddle them with debt and give them no guarantee of work.

“Telecom needs to ditch the dirty tricks, such as intimidating our members with surveillance, and enter good faith discussions about how this fiasco can be fixed.

“Telecom and Visionstream are showing no willingness to face up to the situation and talk with us but leadership is desperately needed, and the Minister is the right person to show it.

“It’s insanity to have the network falling over when there are hundreds of skilled workers standing idle because Telecom refuses to let them work unless they sign away their security of income and employment rights.”

The letter to Steven Joyce is available as a downloadable PDF here: http://wwwepmu.org.nz/assets/Visionstream/Joyce-Lttr.pdf

ENDS

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