Electrical Trades Union Protected Industrial Action at Essential Energy

UPDATE:

On 1 August 2024, the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) provided notice to Essential Energy of its intention to commence industrial action effective from 8 August 2024, with rolling one (1) hour stoppages for participating ETU members.

Essential Energy has also received notice of a range of other indefinite or periodic bans, including limitations on the following work tasks and activities:

• Use of a specified range of Information Technology programs and Applications
• Certifying and inspecting Accredited Service Providers’ (ASPs) designs and projects
• Verification on Life Support Customers for planned outages
• Field Staff Switching – meaning that power will not be switched off which will prevent certain planned works from going ahead
• Locking or unlocking of equipment including electrical cabinets, electrical equipment, switching stations and other hardware devices
• Issuing of access permits (other than during fault and emergency conditions) and field access authorities for non-Essential Energy employees
• Creating or writing planned switching sheets.

Some of the cited actions include a Safety Commitment that ensures a level of employees being available for fault and emergency.

The safety of our employees, customers and the wider community remains our number one priority. We are reprioritising work to ensure urgent and critical work can be performed as required, and Essential Energy will continue to respond to fault and emergency work throughout the industrial action to help ensure a safe and reliable power supply for all customers.

Potential Impacts

The planned industrial action is likely to create unavoidable disruptions for ASPs, contractors and customers through the possible postponement of planned work. ASPs will receive notice of planned work being postponed on the morning of the job. Notice will be provided through a phone call or email that morning.

Any job that is postponed will need to be resubmitted via the Essential Connection Portal. For projects not being administered via the Essential Connections Portal, a ‘Request for Planned Outage’ form CEOP6013 will need to be completed and submitted via contestableworks@essentialenergy.com.au.

What do you need to do?

Communicate this information to relevant members of your organisation.

Further Information

If you need further information, please email aspinfo@essentialenergy.com.au.