ACT Electricity and Water employees were guaranteed payment of the 2 per cent public-service enterprise-bargaining pay increase, the chief executive, Mike Sargeant said yesterday.
He was responding to assertions made by several ACTEW workers that ACTEW was attempting to avoid paying the rise. The workers, in a letter to üThe Canberra Times, had supported the Minister for Urban Services, Terry Connolly, who had said the ACTEW had to find the money with efficiencies.
Earlier, Dr Sargeant had been reported as saying to Mr Connolly that the ACTEW would have to increase charges by 1 per cent or shed 70 staff to fund the enterprise agreement made with ACT Government employees.
Mr Connolly said every agency confronted with savings targets initially responded by saying it would sack workers or raise prices.
The workers in an unsigned letter that ACTEW was trying to get out of paying the 2 per cent to workers while executive positions and executive perks had increased and blue-collar jobs had fallen.
Dr Sargeant said yesterday they were suffering a misapprehension. ACTEW was bound to pay the rise, the issue was how it was to be funded.
He pointed to annual reports over the past three years which showed that executive staff had not increased and that blue-collar jobs had remained fairly constant. Executive pay was along standard public-service lines.
A misleading perception of more executive jobs could have been created because ACTEW had to follow public-service rules and advertise all positions during restructuring or redefinition of jobs even if no actual new jobs were being created.
Dr Sargeant said figures, as published in the past two annual reports showed blue-collar jobs as 665 and 653, engineering jobs as 353 and 355 and administrative jobs as 347, 343 and 345. Senior executive jobs had gone from 12 in June 1990 to 14 in June 1992 because two senior positions had been held vacant for some time during the corporatisation process.