Industrial action escalates over union wage demands for Evoenergy workers

Union industrial action in the ACT has expanded to the company’s control room as members continue to push for better pay and conditions.

Over the past seven weeks, Electrical Trades Union (ETU) actions have included switching bans to disrupt and delay planned maintenance of the network.

Now that’s been escalated to the control centre, a move that the union described as “unprecedented”.

The new action was endorsed by more than 90 per cent of workers who voted in the protected action ballot, which means employees can take legally protected action in the nerve centre of the network.

ETU NSW/ACT secretary Allen Hicks said the ACT Government needed to step up and help get this pay deal across the line.

He explained the Territory Government owns 50 per cent of Evoenergy through Icon Water and this meant it could influence change for workers.

“When the company makes profits – and it has made record profits this year – dividends are paid to the ACT Government,” Mr Hicks said.

“So while they own 50 per cent of it, they have the capacity to influence those shareholders in the decisions that Evoenergy makes.”

The last offer made to workers by Evoenergy equated to 8 per cent over three years, but the union is calling for 6 per cent per annum to be in line with the consumer price index (CPI).

Mr Hicks said the company could afford to pay workers more.

“Evoenergy can not cry poor, it is rolling in profits,” he said.

“These hardworking men and women work difficult, unpredictable hours to give the ACT a reliable energy supply, yet Evoenergy wants to shrink their take-home pay.”

Mr Hicks specifically called on ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr and Energy Minister Shane Rattenbury to intervene and push negotiations along.

“To date, [Shane] Rattenbury [as] the Energy Minister, and the Chief Minister have been showing workers contempt by not even sitting down and having a proper conversation with us about this,” he said.

“[These people] work every single day of the week in all adverse weather conditions, no matter what’s occurring, to keep the power on and keep a safe and reliable electricity network.

“At the end of the day what we’re saying is, in return [for this] we just want a cost of living wage increase, and we don’t think that’s unreasonable.”

An ACT Government spokesperson said it was not a party to this enterprise bargaining process and so could not interfere.

“However, we again call on all parties to negotiate in good faith, as occurred with the recent ACT Government EBAs, to reach a compromise and maintain the quality services provided to Canberra households and businesses,” they said.

In its latest statement, Evoenergy accused the ETU of misleading people about what pay offer had actually been put on the table.

“The pay offer totals 9.5 per cent over three years, not 8 per cent as suggested by the ETU,” it said.

“Further, Evoenergy makes and will continue to make employer superannuation contributions of 15 per cent, which is well in excess of legislated superannuation requirements (currently 11 per cent and increasing to 12 per cent from July 2025).”

The company said it was doing what it could to reach a “fair agreement”.

“We are disappointed the ETU has made the decision to escalate industrial action while these discussions are occurring,” its statement said.

But ETU members plan to continue industrial action until a deal is struck.

While workers will stop action if there are life-threatening emergencies, other power issues will be impacted.

“This [action] will delay connections, new connections, if people have power outages – as long as it’s not an emergency – then that power will stay out for longer than it normally would,” Mr Hicks said.