The provider will shed 1395 jobs this financial year following the Australian Energy Regulator’s (AER) order to cut operating expenditure over the next four years.

The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) says, like other regional areas, Goulburn will be hard hit by job and service losses.

The company has confirmed that some electricity meter readers would be made redundant under an outsourcing arrangement.

The Goulburn Post understands that two such roles will be affected in Goulburn.

Essential Energy says it hasn’t made any decisions yet on the location of overall job losses. “However, we anticipate it will be relatively proportionate across (the company’s) footprint area,” a spokeswoman said.

Goulburn has 40 to 50 employees, the ETU previously told the Post.

In April the Regulator ruled that Essential Energy, Transgrid and Endeavour Energy must cut operating expenditure by 25 per cent and reduce revenue it raises from charges by 25pc.

The three providers are shedding a total 2750 positions in response.

While it will mean a $313 reduction in annual bills for Essential Energy customers, the company is also slashing its workforce.

The provider has also confirmed that its apprenticeship program, including that in Goulburn, is on hold. There will be no intake for 2015.

The union’s assistant secretary Neville Betts has slammed the company’s approach.

“We believe there are plenty of other options (to save money),” he said.

“In the past few years they have walked away from doing contestable work, which they used to monopolise,” he said.

“...We believe by taking that up again, they could minimise potential job losses.” He claimed the provider was using workers in their argument with the AER.

On June 30, Essential Energy’s deputy chief executive officer Gary Humphreys released a newsletter stating that as of July 1, the company would have 1400 “unfunded positions, costing $14.7m a month.”

“This is simply not sustainable and we must immediately focus on cost management,” he wrote. But Mr Betts said the AER had not instructed any provider to cut jobs.

“Transgrid, which has a huge depot at Yass has determined that it will not have one job loss as a result of the AER determination,” he said.

“That organisation has taken a wholly different strategy, deciding that their people are the backbone and they won’t use them as pawns.

“Essential Energy is doing the opposite and in my opinion, they are vandals.”

He also seized on Mr Humphreys statement in the newsletter that Essential Energy (its Goulburn depot is pictured) had overspent by $96m in operating costs in 2014/15 and over collected $387m in revenue in the same year that had to be repaid to customers.

In this respect, Mr Betts said workers were being forced to pay for “mismanagement.”

Consultation with unions on the first phase of job cuts will begin in September. Talks on the second round will start when the outcome of the providers’ appeal against the AER ruling is known later this year.

The union claims the three organisations already have a “hit list” of employees it will cut, starting with 700 already redeployed.

The providers want to negotiate a new draft redundancy policy with unions but Mr Betts says they must abide by the existing one. “In that (document) there are no forced redundancies,” he said.

“We’re happy to consult generally but we won’t agree to any change in that policy.”

Mr Betts said any suggestion to the contrary by Essential Energy was designed to cause “mass panic” and encourage workers to “jump first.”

Meantime, he told the Post that the providers’ apprentices were only being offered six-month contracts.

“For Goulburn generally, the outcome won’t be a positive one,” he said.

“If they are cutting job numbers, the services will go backwards. That’s the reality of it.”