Power worker’s life ’has disadvantages’

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34156, 18 May 1976, Page 2

Power worker’s life ’has disadvantages’

Electricity Department employees appear to enjoy many perquisites—cheap electricity, cheap rents, and various allowances for living in remote areas.

They pay low rates for electricity — about $1.16 a week. A maximum quota of 2000 units is allowed per quarter in summer, and 3500 per quarter in winter. They live in N.Z.E.D. houses at very cheap rents — these vary according to the number 'of bedrooms, and whether they are in an urban or rural area. However, rent for a threebedroomed urban house is about $l5 a week (including electricity).

Employees living in isolated areas receive a “remote allowance” — the average married employee at a remote power station receives about $BO a year. These employees may also be entitled to an education board grant if their children are at boarding school. This could be as much as $lOO a term.

However, there are also many drawbacks, according to the secretary-organiser of

the Canterbury branch of the Public Service Association (Mr J. M. McKenzie).

The seemingly cheap rents were very often accompanied by a commitment to the job, he said. The Electricity Department has about 1800 houses in New Zealand, of which some 500 are “tied.” Certain employees are required by the nature of their jobs 'to live close to their place of work. Alarms are connected to their houses, and they are subject to “call-out” if there should be a fault at the power or sub-station. “These employees are required at a moment’s notice to drop what they are doing, and rush to the power station when something goes wrong,” Mr McKenzie raid. “This may occur up to 15 or 16 times a week.”

‘ Many of them live a long distance from social services such as doctors and dentists. Food and other essentials may cost them far more than their urban counterparts because they must travel a long way to buy them”

Boarding school fees were about $4OO per term, he said. A married man with three children could pay

about $2700 a year, even after the education board grant. A labourer for the N.Z.E.D. earns about $4200 gross. A station operator might earn $7040, and the superintendent of a major station such as Manapouri, $9644. Discussed by Cabinet The dispute between the Government and electricity workers was unlikely to reach the stage of removing legislative protection from the Public Service Association, the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) said last evening, the Press Association reports from Wellington.

Mr Muldoon said the Cabinet had discussed the dispute, but he had little to add to remarks he made at lunch-time yesterday in which he threatened the P.S.A. with the possibility of changing the legislation on which it is based. Because the P.S.A. is a voluntary organisation, it cannot be deregistered.

The Government would not tolerate a power shutdown, but the dispute was unlikely to get to that stage, he said.