QUEANBEYAN City Council has confirmed they have been in contact with Essential Energy following the state-owned electricity distributor's proposal to shed its 160-strong workforce in Queanbeyan within 12 months.
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After the story broke in mid-September, Mayor Tim Overall said he would request early talks with the CEO of Essential Energy, Vince Graham, to discuss options and to highlight the damage such a volume of job losses would do to Queanbeyan.
Essential Energy told the Queanbeyan Age this week it was not aware of that invitation but confirmed the Mayor did request a meeting with Deputy chief executive officer Gary Humphreys.
Mr Humphreys wrote back to Cr Overall to explain the transformation Essential Energy intends to make. It is still unclear if the parties will meet.
"We are currently consulting employees about the proposed changes and will determine whether we'll offer [them] retained positions relocated to either smaller premises in the same location, or to another location within Essential Energy's network area," Mr Humphreys said.
Mr Humphreys previously told the Age on September 15 it is less likely Essential Energy will relocate to another Queanbeyan office.
In a first round of cuts, eight members of the 131 staff in the administrative, planning and Southern region control room team in the Queanbeyan Morisset Street office were told their jobs would be cut immediately.
The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) says the corporation is not being open in its dealings with the union.
"They're being very coy and not open at all with us about the people being employed at Morisset Street," Neville Betts of the ETU said.
"Our delegate in their main location at Port Macquarie believes the manager there will not rule out complete closure of southern region control room at Queanbeyan in 2016."
The corporation has launched an appeal against the Australian Energy Regulator's backdated cuts in revenue by 25 per cent and operating costs by 30 per cent with the Australian Competition Tribunal.
That will take at least until mid-October to hear, leaving most of the affected staff uncertain of their options until then. Essential Energy will not renew its lease on its office above Kmart in Morisset Street.
