By David Smith
SYDNEY — Hunter Valley residents who read the front page article "200 new jobs in power move" in the February 6 Newcastle Herald may have thought that a much needed jobs boost for the region had occurred.
The article concerns Energy Australia's decision to relocate two key operations from Sydney to Newcastle. The company is the energy distributor for the Hunter area and most of Sydney.
If you talk to some Energy Australia workers and inspect the article more closely, however, a different picture emerges. The 200 "new" jobs, it turns out, actually consist of 100 Sydney employees relocated to Newcastle from the Testing and Certification Australia (TCA) business, 50 Customer Call Centre jobs relocated from Sydney to Newcastle and just 40 new TCA positions created in Newcastle.
The TCA business, which covers on a variety of specialised electrical testing, has been headquartered in Sydney for several decades. As a result, Sydney clients (both within Energy Australia and external customers) form the bulk of its customer base.
Those parts of TCA focussed on external customers will therefore lose a lot of business if the Newcastle relocation goes ahead (many long-term Sydney based customers will not send their work to Newcastle). If their workload decreases, how likely are 40 new TCA positions in Newcastle?
The staff to be affected by the change have been kept in the dark. To date, no information has been provided to them about either redundancy packages (for those who wish to remain in Sydney) or relocation allowances.
On top of this, there is the threat of privatisation.
The NSW treasurer, Michael Egan, claims that 340 indirect jobs will be created from the move, but can he be believed? Power workers remember well his past promises that "the NSW power industry is not for sale" and his subsequent transformation into the strongest advocate for privatisation.
If the NSW ALP is so concerned about creating jobs in the industry, why have more than 700 Energy Australia jobs been lost since the NSW ALP took office? And why pose the question of privatisation, which would result in extensive job losses, as occurred in Victoria?
This exercise is not about job creation. It is designed to boost Labor's chances of re-election in March next year.