On 25th June 2009 Telecom announced that its two biggest network engineering contractors, Transfield and Downer EDI had lost their contracts to look after the Northland and Auckland network to a new company, Visionstream. 700 lines engineers were informed that their jobs were redundant and they would only get work if they transferred to Visionstream as dependent contractors.
Despite widespread industrial action, organised by their union, the EPMU, along with financial support to support the workers from being starved into submission, the lines engineers were made redundant, and one by one, many reluctantly became their own bosses.
Some of us wrote blogs about this dispute warning there would be serious consequences for the industry and Telecom.
An independent analysis of the contracts offered by Vision stream calculated that as owner operators, the workers could lose up to 50 – 66% of their income. The consequences haven’t just impacted on the lines engineers. Customers are paying too, just like we were told it would.
The EPMU reports that :
Last week, Visionstream called on its contractors for the tenth week in a row to work through the weekend in order to deal with a backlog of service calls. In a memo sent to all contractors, Visionstream said that they are currently going through “the worst performance we have faced as individual companies and Visionstream ever”.
Visionstream pays a flat rate to its dependent contractors for service calls, and if they want the work they have to meet the company’s demands.
The NZ Herald reported on the 8th July 2011 that ;
“Maintenance of Auckland’s telephone network at its worst in years – but the company in charge denies taking up to five days to fix faults.
The company asked all installation and fault technicians to postpone days off between June 28 and July 8, and acknowledged that this came on top of having staff working every weekend for the previous nine weeks.
“For the last nine weeks, on average up to 1000 customers per day in the Visionstream-managed areas have had their service impacted in one form or another,” the internal memo said.
I see these workers around still, driving the same Chorus vans they were driving when they were employees, but they are earning heaps less for the privilege of being their own boss.
They were treated them badly. The law allowed Telecom to get away with it.
Now we’re all paying.
That was an obvious result really. You can’t do the same work with less people when the work is geographically separated.
It’s worth bearing in mind that Jun-July corresponds to the highest volume of network assurance (fault fixing) and that in general, the far north is the hardest hit.
We’ve also had some pretty extreme weather events this year in terms of flooding and storms which is a contributing factor (some particularly bad weather in May courtesy of La Nina as I recall).
A friend in a ‘leafy Auckland suburb’ lost their Telecom phone and internet a couple of weeks ago, which took them four days to repair. Pathetic.
@ Jennifer
Did it take them 4 days to repair the fault (sounds complex!) or 4 days before an appointment could be arranged?
@ Gregor, I believe it took them four days to get around to tending to the fault.
Darien – we are actually very happy with the performance of Visionstream and the decision to award them 10-year contracts for Northland and the Auckland region.
Visionstream recently issued an internal memo in an effort to galvanise the support of their team to help clear a backlog of work over the weekend. The EPMU then released a statement suggesting that the memo meant Visionstream’s approach was not working.
But the memo actually shows that Visionstream is committed to providing better service to customers and is benchmarking itself against the organisations that are performing at the highest level.
We’ve lifted the benchmark well beyond previous years and we’re impressed with the progress Visionstream has made in delivering great services for our customers, especially against a backdrop of some of the worst rainfall in 25 years.
On average, Visionstream meets more than 90 percent of the service commitments for fault repairs within 24hrs of them being reported to Chorus, and they connect 95 percent of new phone and broadband connections within three days of the request being made. These performance standards are very high by world standards and we have no doubt Visionstream are committed to taking them higher.
But like other utility providers, excessive rainfall can cause a significant increase in the number of network faults through water entering the network. Over the last few months, fault levels have increased 30% causing some minor delays in turnaround of network repairs in Auckland and Northland.
Thanks
Andrew Bowater
Head of Government Relations
Telecom New Zealand
@ Jennifer
So you don’t actually know.
Best not to jump to the ‘pathetic’ POV before having the facts.
Not to be too critical but the ‘My friend says…’ line of arguement doesn’t tend to hold much water. Context is the key.
<blockquoteIt’s worth bearing in mind that Jun-July corresponds to the highest volume of network assurance (fault fixing) and that in general, the far north is the hardest hit.
Yep, so the thing that you do is ensure that you have enough people to cover that expected increase without causing your present employees (dependent contractors are employees despite what the law says) excess stress and over work (which is actually against the law BTW).
@ Draco
Sure, but I guess what I’m positioning is sometimes you can’t take everything into account.
Though this time of year is prepared for, you can’t have a technician on every streetcorner.
The same sort of stresses occur most years. Other than a unqualified POV from the Herald that the situation is “at its worst in years”, there is limited context provided around say, unusual peak demand on top of the expected seasonal highs and whether in fact, fault resolution is on average better or worse than any other given year.
“the worst performance we have faced as individual companies and Visionstream ever”. What did they expect, screw the subcontractor, pay them sweet FA and let them take the risk and the flak. Shame on them.
When did Visionstream take over the contract ?
“the worst performance we have faced as individual companies and Visionstream ever”.
If it was announced in June 2009 there have not been too many years of data to make a comparison.
@ David
June 2009. Prior to that it was Downer EDI and Transfield.
@ Gregor, they took 4 days to get to tending to the fault. Fairly clear, I would have thought. Bottom line, they were without landline and internet for 4 days, which is pathetic service in my book.
Lost IT connection on Friday. Reported the fault. Did all the recommended tests and remote fixes. Nothing worked. Stayed home from work yesterday to meet the promised Telecom technician coming to fix it in the morning. No technician. Rang to ask where he was. Telecom said, Oh, this is a ‘complex fault’ so you’ve been upgraded. He’ll be there tomorrow evening.
Upgraded? UPGRADED? How is waiting 30 hours after promised time and wasting a day’s AL to let him in an Upgrade?!
Guess in Telecomish that’d be “I’m DELIGHTED with the service?”
I heard about a rural school that has been without internet access since late may, still waiting on the repair job.
Those of us who live in rural NZ dont seem to matter, great advertisment for privitization (partial and fully).
Oh and by the way, the school dosnt get cell phone coverage either, so no easy fix there.
@Waterboy
Rural networks cost to maintain. There just isn’t enough customers to make it a paying proposition.
@Waterboy – at least they won’t get brain cancer! But my sympathy about the internet
@Andrew – thanks for comment. You will never convince me that depriving workers of their employment rights to “be their own boss” so a company has a competitive advantage is either an ethical or fair decision.
@ Jennifer
Like I say, ’4 days to get to a fault’ can mean a lot of things so it’s not that clear.
Do you have any idea of the complexity?
Did it require work at the exchange and your ‘friends’ premises?
Were there multiple site vists by the tech?
Do you know if the issue affected multiple people in the area?
Do you know if the issue was experienced in a period of heavy weather?
Do you iknow if the 3 days previously where a tech might have been available at certain timeslots, it might have been inconvenient for your ‘friend’?
Like I say, without understanding all the factors we only have part of the story. Just because a skilled and therefore in demand resource is not available at the drop of a hat, does not mean the system is broken. It could well be that the limited resources available had more pressing demand to deal with or god forbid, other people might have been in the queue first in a period of exceptional demand.
Yes, it’s annoying when we don’t get what we want right away and certainly whoever took the call should be able to explain that adequately to a customer, but it’s not the end of the world to be without a landline for a few days.
I’m sure your ‘friend’ had a mobile phone or if not, a neighbour that would be more than happy to let him/her use theirs in an emergency.
@ Gregor, nonsense. These are people in the middle of a ‘world class city’ called Auckland. Details are irrelevant to their case. They were without internet and landline for 4 days, and treated like the example Arandar mentions. If Telecom wants to screw their technicians and run a skeleton roster to save a few dollars to help pay for the CE’s salary and lifestyle, then they make that choice. Sadly, people with faulty landlines do not have a choice.
@Gregor W
The fault i spoke of is still on going (1.5 months).
There is no cell phone coverage.
When i last spoke to a contractor (about a year ago)they were reducing numbers in this region down to 1, im not sure if this happened or not.
How complex would the fault have to be for this?
Man that sucks
@ Jennifer
‘Details are irrelevant.’
Wow. What a superb line of reasoning. Forget supply and demand, constraints or any externalities. Hey while you’re at it, blame the MSM as you usually do. That will cap it off.
I suggest you take a look at Andrew’s comments above though no doubt you will write them off as ‘irrelevant’ because they are, you know, facts that don’t support your uninformed position.
@waterboy
Have you got details of the school in question? I’m sure Andrew can probably fill you in on the details that might shed some light on the issue.
Regarding RAN (mobile) coverage it does seem a bit strange. Normally these services are restored pretty smartly, particularly if you have a total service blackout. But again if this is in an area that has had significant structural damage due to severe weather, things can take a while to fix. There are lots of elements to a phone network and some of the fault fixing can be fairly tricky. Your best bet is to contact Telecom and ask them what is going on.
Well ,,i was talking to a lineman the other day who was repairing the cable in the street, and he had all the gears ie: nice truck all the gear in the back for the work he was doing a real nice setup.
But while talking about his job i was shocked that these guys dont get any call out fee, Vissionstream puts that in there pocket, he has to repair every pillar he opens on that job and put it back to a much higher standard than what he found it for no payment , this he has to pay for out of his own pocket, so if he was to open 3 pillars while looking for a fault he pays for the repair on them pillars out of his own pocket, and when he fixes the fault, a Vissionstream/ Chorus manager then comes around to look at every job he does and then decides if they will pay him for the original fault job which is $80, not to forget he has already paid out of his pocket to repair 3 other pillars at his cost $10 bucks each.
more than likely the Vissionstream / chorus manager will find something wrong just so he wont get paid for the job at all
He stated that on any given day he will go to work all day do many many jobs and will not get paid for any job he has done because he has no rights and Vissionstream. chorus want him and his fellow workers to do this job for nothing.
So what kind of service do you expect in the future from these guys if the crowd they work for rips them off every day.and i thought the slave trade was finished ,,