Power workers laid off as building slows down

Up to a fifth of the people who maintain Auckland's power lines have been laid off after the collapse of new subdivision work.

The country's biggest electrical lines contractor, Whangarei-based Northpower, said yesterday that it had laid off 55 of its 450 staff in Auckland and 35 of its 350 staff in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty, including all 25 who were based in Rotorua.

Human resource manager Barbara Harrison said the company had cut total staff numbers from 970 to 860 in the past two months and was consulting its 32 staff at Warkworth about possible further redundancies.

An organiser with the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, Joe Gallagher, said another 25 had been laid off in Transfield's electrical division and about 30 at Siemens, which lost a contract with Vector to maintain part of the Auckland lines network.

He estimated that about 120 of the 600 people maintaining Auckland power lines had lost their jobs.

A new contractor, McConnell Dowell's Auckland-based subsidiary Electrix, has won the Vector contract for the North Shore and has hired more than 100 staff this year, including most of the redundant Siemens workers. NZ general manager Robert Ferris said the company also offered work in New Zealand or Australia to many from Northpower.

Mr Gallagher said many had chosen to cross the Tasman.

"We are losing these guys to Australia to big bucks," he said. "They can get $30 or $40 an hour in Australia, plus a $200-a-day living away from home allowance because a lot of these jobs involve travel."

Ms Harrison said the main reason for the Northpower redundancies was the downturn in new subdivisions. "For the last six months we've been working very hard to avoid redundancies," she said.

"We reduced the working week from 45 to 40 hours to avoid redundancies in February. We thought about the nine-day fortnight scheme, but the nature of our work is such that we need people seven days a week and it's just not possible to have people off for one of those days.

"With the downturn in the subdivision market, we had too many people and we had to adjust our numbers to keep the people we had gainfully employed."

The company worked with Work and Income to help redundant workers find new jobs. "Northpower has a very family-orientated organisation and many of these people we will remain in touch with," she said. "When it does pick up we will undoubtedly be looking for people again."