Transmission Gully redundancy fears
Workers building the delayed billion-dollar Transmission Gully project now face potential redundancies thinning their ranks.
About 88 staff working with the joint venture CPB-HEB could be made redundant.
Amalgamated Workers Union national secretary Maurice Davis said the union was contacted last Friday about a proposed restructure, including 88 redundancies.
‘‘Over the weekend we were having conversations, but come Monday they have postponed it and put it on hold for a week for negotiations with the NZTA.’’
CPB was proposing the redundancies, which could have kicked in as soon as mid-June, due to the seasonal winter slowdown in work and impacts of Covid-19 restrictions. But Davis said the 88 workers were the ‘‘meat in the sandwich’’ in negotiations over delayed payments of $190 million additional funding the NZ Transport Agency previously agreed to pay joint venture CPB-HEB.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the road was on track for a November
opening this year.
The level 4 lockdown put paid to that, plunging the agency, the Gateway Partnership contracted to deliver the road, and the road builder CPB-HEB into further negotiations. Earlier this year, the agency settled claims made by CPB-HEB over previous unavoidable costs and delays, which saw the agency agree to pay an additional $190m. The road will now not open till 2021 at the earliest.
In a written response to questions, an agency spokeswoman refused to comment on possible redundancies or the status of the $190m additional payment. CIMIC, the Australian parent company to CPB, declined to comment.
The public-private partnership between Gateway and the agency was signed in July 2014. The Gateway Partnership would design, construct, finance, operate and maintain the road for 25 years. It contracted CPB-HEB to build the road. Construction began on the 27 kilometre-long road in 2015, with April 2020 initially touted as when traffic would flow on to four lanes connecting Linden in north Wellington to Paeka¯ka¯riki on the Ka¯ piti Coast.