KEY POINTS:
Telecom technicians, who earn less than 1 per cent of their new boss Paul Reynolds' $5.5 million annual package, are seeking their first pay rise in nine years.
The technicians at Auckland's Airedale St telephone exchange earn from $36,000 to $50,000 a year to manage the city's phone installations and repairs.
They have not had a pay increase since their last collective agreement was negotiated in 1998.
Union delegate Jayantilal Parbhu-Jaga, 47, who earns $43,000 a year after 20 years with the company, says Telecom has refused to renegotiate the agreement ever since then.
"The only way they will is if we sign an individual contract, which we don't want to do," he said. "With individual contracts you don't get double-time for overtime and there is no redundancy pay or retirement leave."
Colleague Stephen Smith, 51, earns $42,000 after 32 years with the company.
In contrast, details made public this week show that new chief executive Paul Reynolds, a former top executive at British Telecom, will get a total package of $5,457,690 a year.
He will earn a base salary of $1.75 million, a performance-based bonus of up to a further $1.75 million and long-term performance-based share rights of up to yet another $1.75 million a year.
He will also get an accommodation allowance of $100,000 and taxation advice of $6000 a year for his first two years, plus 10 business-class return flights to Britain each year for himself, his wife and their 15-year-old son, who will join him in New Zealand next month.
Mr Smith said he and his wife, who also works full time, were "just coping" on his salary of 0.8 per cent of what Dr Reynolds will get.
"It's a joke, especially when we are not getting any increase at all," he said, adding later that Dr Reynolds would be worth his package if he could "do the job" of reviving Telecom's fortunes.
Mr Parbhu-Jaga is separated and has full day-to-day care of his 16-year-old daughter. To be able to pay his mortgage, he has an extra job as a technician on Bollywood movies.
He said the Telecom technicians - about a dozen of them on the collective contract in Auckland and about 60 throughout the country - were essential to the nation's telephone system.
Telecom spokesman Mark Watts said the company was "very happy to discuss their situation with them individually or collectively".
