The plan to transform arrangements for field work being promoted by Telecom was described as an act of 'desperation' by line engineers.

From quite some time, industrial action is being implemented over Telecom's move to make engineers owners-operators by Telecommunications engineers around the country.

An agreement with Australian company Visionstream in Auckland and Northland was signed by Telecom's network division, Chorus; which is scheduled to be in place by
1st October.

It was today revealed by Telecom that the arrangement will be accelerated by three weeks. It also declared that Chorus' work in North Shore and Waitakere will be taken over by Visionstream much before the planned date.

It was specified by Telecom that owner-operators were lined up, and were keen to commence installing and repairing customer phone and broadband services.

"Because Visionstream recruitment was progressing well, the transition was brought forward by three weeks and Visionstream would begin managing North Shore operations from September 7 and the Waitakere from September 14," said Chorus chief executive Mark Ratcliffe.

But bringing forward the transition was described as a sign of desperation by the engineer's union EPMU, since fault repair times blew out and workers continued to refuse to sign over to Visionstream.

The announcement appeared when lines engineers entered their third week of full strike action in Northland, and low-level industrial action in other centres.

As per EPMU national secretary Andrew Little, the accelerated timetable was a sign of Telecom's desperation.

He continued, "We're aware there's now such a backlog that 118 faults are lying unfixed in the Northland area and fault repair times in major centres have blown out to three weeks from a baseline of two to three days."