Exchange jobs go

Press, 20 November 1987, Page 3

Exchange jobs go

Rangiora reporter

About 20 permanent workers and several casual staff at North Canterbury and Malvern telephone exchanges will lose their jobs at 1.30 p.m. today as the exchanges in four townships are closed. The Darfield, Culverden, Kaikoura, and Amberley exchanges will close their doors and all transactions by subscribers will be dealt with by the Christchurch exchange. The country exchanges have been handling transfer charge calls, collect and person-to-person calls, ill calls, and coin box calls — a personal-

ised service many in the districts appreciated. Operators at the various exchanges yesterday said they were kept very busy. Each exchange has about five permanent staff with some having casual staff.

Redundancy agreements had been arranged after almost all the operators refused redeployment to Christchurch.

“We have everything here — our families and our homes,” said one Kaikoura operator. Some of the five staff had been able to find casual employment, but no-one had full-time work, he said.

In Amberley none of the five permanent staff

and two casual staff had been able to find alternative employment and all had opted not to travel to Christchurch because of the distance. All were reluctant to move from their local community. The regional organiser for the Post Office Union, Mr Trevor Young, said the redundancy deal offered to permanent employees was a good one. “Telecom have given us a better deal than New Zealand Post did,” he said.

Casual staff had not received redundancy. “We couldn’t do anything about that. It was negotiated at a national level,” said Mr Young.