Tamworth Transgrid staff fight for pay rise from management

The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) met with Transgrid employees on Tuesday morning, to encourage them to vote 'no' to Transgrid's offer.

ETU NSW and ACT deputy secretary, Allen Hicks, said they were pushing for a three per cent increase as this was what other companies like QLD's Powerlink had given their staff.

"These are the same workers who go out every single day and make sure there's a safe and reliable network that produces power in the state so they're an essential service that's being provided to the community and businesses, and the offer the company has put on the table at the moment isn't good enough," Mr Hicks said.

"A lot of these workers have to work away from their families for many days at a time and I don't think management appreciate that."

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About 30 of the 50 strong staff at the Tamworth site attended the meeting.

Mr Hicks said the ETU was asking Transgrid to come to the table and "offer a fair and reasonable outcome".

"Every three to four years there's a cycle we go through to try and get better wages and conditions and that's exactly what we're in at the moment, we're in the process of negotiating with them for some time now," he told the Leader.

"We're now getting to the point where we put a formal offer to their employees and asked them to vote 'no' and over the course of this week and next week we're having those meetings with Transgrid employees across the state.

"Once we've done that we'll have an informed view on where we're going with it but at the moment it's clear from this [Tamworth] meeting that the offer on the table is not good enough for our members and we'll work out after those meetings what those next steps are."

A Transgrid spokesperson said "we value our people and their contributions and we are continuing to talk to them about a fair pay rise".

Unions will meet next week and will then "be making an informed decision with the government from there".

"I'll be talking to Transgrid on the Wednesday or Thursday to try and accelerate this process and if they want to genuinely negotiate with us in good faith, and get to a reasonable outcome, we can do that quite quickly," Mr Hicks said.

"If they don't want to do that and want to stick with their position then we can escalate this quite quickly as well and I don't want to go down that path but if that's the only thing that our members and employees of Transgrid are able to do to advance their wages and conditions, then we've got to give it a serious consideration."

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