The Tasmanian Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU) has admitted to making “dishonest and misleading” statements during recent employee agreement negotiations with TasNetworks.
Their about-face comes after the Fair Work Commission ruled that CEPU officials endangered public safety by ordering industrial action in TasNetworks’ Transmission Control Room during a severe weather event last month.
Action allegedly included comments that control room operators would refuse to restore power to those reliant on it for life support, even as a total of 40,000 customers across Tasmania faced outages.
The incident was one of four deemed to have threatened community safety during the storm, prompting TasNetworks to seek an end to the industrial action.
In a statement, the union acknowledged that organiser Chris Clark made a variety of “incorrect” comments and that claims in a recent ‘Vote No’ flyer were misleading.
They said the flyer falsely stated that backpay and a $6,000 bonus would be taxed at 48 cents in the dollar.
“These amounts were calculated at maximum income tax rates. The amount at which these benefits are taxed will in fact vary according to an employee’s overall salary,” the CEPU said.
“We acknowledge this and retract the statements in full. We admit that these statements were misleading to potential voters.”
Clark had also accused TasNetworks management of being “prepared to bend the truth” and “paint as bleak a picture as possible” when conveying the extent of the severe outages.
“The CEPU withdraws those false statements and commits not to repeat them,” the statement continued.
The union says it “regrets” its actions and takes its “good faith bargaining obligations seriously.”
