Lengthy, storm-caused power outages in Wellington last week were worsened by chronic understaffing, a lines worker says.
Some Wellingtonians were without power for five days last week, forcing them to hire generators and stop using the toilet so their septic tanks would not overflow.
Wellington Electricity uses utility contractor Omexom to maintain and repair its power grid across the region.
Lines worker George, whose name has been changed, described the Wellington depot as “disorganised” and “slow”.
He told the Herald there were only 22 lines workers at his depot, but believed there were many more at the company’s Auckland depots.
Several of his colleagues worked more than 100 hours last week to repair outages caused by severe rain and wind, he said.
“We do have a policy where you are meant to only do 70 hours a week, but that went out the window by Wednesday.
“It’s not fair to expect this every time a storm happens.”
He believed that, if their depot had more workers, they could have restored Wellington’s power much quicker because many of the fixes took only 10-15 minutes.
The lines workers had been “screaming out” for the company to hire more staff.
George claimed people who worked at previous contractor Northpower were offered less money to work at Omexom, and said many moved cities to keep working for Northpower, or moved to Australia.
Omexom told the Herald in a statement that it could not discuss specific staffing or employment matters.
“Our team are fully supported with a wide range of generous benefits and allowances.
“The safety and wellbeing of our employees and all those who may be affected by our activities is imperative, and we make no compromises with safety.”
Omexom was conscious of restoring power as quickly as possible in a safe manner, and it had a “strict fatigue management procedure” to protect its workers.
“Teams need to be safe doing this in storm events. For example, they cannot be working on poles in high wind gusts.”
E tū union director Mat Danaher said workers he spoke to had multiple concerns about Omexom, which secured its Wellington Electricity contract last year.
For 14 years, that contract had been held by New Zealand-owned Northpower.
“There’s a unanimous sense that members were treated better by Northpower,” he said.
“They were amazed that [Omexom] got the contract, given how its operational failures had led to those power outages in Auckland.”
In 2024, Omexom workers removed all the nuts from two legs of a Transpower transmission tower during routine maintenance, which caused it to collapse and cut off power to most of Northland for several days.
Omexom did not offer a storm allowance to compensate for working in hazardous conditions, Danaher said.
E tū drew parallels between Wellington Electricity’s power outages and the recent Wellington Water sewage spill because both were essential utilities that contracted their operations to foreign companies.
Wellington Electricity is owned by two Hong Kong-based companies, and Omexom is a subsidiary of a French company.
Wellington Electricity said it was recognised as having one of the most reliable networks in the country by an independent PwC report.
“Omexom has extensive electricity distribution experience, both overseas and in New Zealand.”
A spokesman said Omexom had been the primary field service provider for Vector’s network for more than 15 years.
“One of the reasons we appointed Omexom last year is because, as a national service provider, they bring the scale, capability and flexibility needed to support a network like ours.”
During the recent storm, Wellington Electricity brought in Omexom crews from outside Wellington to help respond to outages, he said.
Wellington Electricity apologised for taking longer than expected to restore power.
“Restoration is always prioritised so we can restore power to the largest number of customers first.
“This means smaller faults affecting individual properties are typically repaired later, which can result in longer outages for some customers even in a city network.”
Nearly all of Omexom’s Wellington workers were part of their union, George said.
They would soon be going into bargaining to get back the pay reduction they sustained when Omexom took over from Northpower.
He said their “last resort was to strike”. However, as essential service workers, there were restrictions on their ability to strike.
Janhavi Gosavi is a Wellington-based journalist for the Herald, covering news in the capital.