Workers off-line at start date

The clock is ticking on the Government's $1.5 billion ultra-fast broadband plan.

In the next few weeks a new investment company, Crown Fibre Holdings, will go to the market to find partners who will build an open-access fibre network over 10 years.

The investment will cover the 33 largest urban areas, with the priority in the first six years to reach business users, schools, health services and greenfield residential developments.

Another $300 million is going into boosting rural coverage.
With almost $2 billion in taxpayer money on offer, plus the private sector contribution, this must represent some kind of employment bonanza.

You wouldn't think it from the way the trained workforce is being treated by one of the Government's likely partners.

Telecom analyst Paul Budde says the details of the rural plan indicate the Government has been talking to Chorus, Telecom New Zealand's functionally separated networks company, and "without Chorus it would be extremely difficult to realise such a regional telecoms plan."

So what's Chorus doing? It's conducting an experiment where the technicians servicing more than a third of its customers will be owner-operators working for an Australian company, Visionstream. Last month the same technicians worked for Transfield or Downer, who still hold contracts for other Telecom patches. They've probably worked for three or four different companies in the two decades since they were trained as telephone technicians by the old New Zealand Post Office, before it became Telecom.

Many of those workers see lean pickings under the Visionstream model, so they've refused to sign the owner-operator contracts which would make them responsible for buying their own equipment, vehicles, insurances and all other business expenses.

Robin Kelly, the external communication manager for Chorus, says the company's new 10-year contracts with Visionstream, Transfield and Downers will create more certainty in the sector to cope with rising demand and new technology. He says the owner-operator model is tried and tested. "Visionstream has told us and I have met the technicians, they say they will increase what they earn.

"They also get the benefits of flexibility and the opportunity to own and run a business underpinned by a proven approach, backed up by back-office support."

Kelly says the new Chorus model takes into account the opportunity to participate in the Government's broadband initiative. He says Chorus is budgeting $1.5 million a year to bring on trainees, and its service partners will do the same.

So how's it working on the ground?

In Northland, Chorus is telling some of what could be as many as 2000 Telecom customers that without service it will take more than two weeks for a technician to fix their faults.

"We apologise for the delay, which is being caused by the union industrial action and ongoing intimidation within the region," Kelly wrote to one disgruntled Kerikeri customer.

Andrew Little, the general secretary of the EPMU, the union which covers many of the affected technicians, says there is little scope for workforce development in the Chorus/Visionstream model.

"As an owner-operator, there is no scope to take on trainees. It slows down work time, and the whole idea is to maximise the work time to maximise income," Little says.

He says as contractors the Visionstream technicians will be hard-pressed to achieve an annual net income of $40,000, which will make it difficult to attend courses to keep their own skills current. Little says the Visionstream owner-operator model fails migrants too.

"We have 50 migrant workers under work permits caught up in this thing," Little says. "The Immigration Service says they have to be offered permanent jobs, and the Visionstream terms of employment are unacceptable for Immigration purposes."

TUANZ's O'Connell thinks the telecommunications companies might be more of a hindrance than a help in a broadband roll-out, especially if they repeat past anti-competitive patterns.

"Telecom has yet to show it is interested in fibre to the end-user," O'Connell says. "The change the Government is trying to drive is high speed out to the edge of the network. That requires different skill-sets."

He's looking to lines companies like Northpower to drive the change.
"Northpower has a full plan worked out on delivering fibre in Whangarei for under $900 a home. That's less than the $3000 the Government is talking about.

"When it comes to digging trenches and laying fibre or stringing it up poles, yes we have the workforce. As far as connecting that fibre to homes, we probably have it.

"On the hard technical side, the system administrators, the network managers, all the people needed to run an internet on steroids, I hope we have them."

adamgifford5@gmail.com