Speaking through a character, he was describing cynics, but his words are as true today as they were in Wilde’s time.

And what could be more cynical – more self-interested than honourable – than job cuts in the essential energy industry?

Unlike Wilde, we do not seek wit nor to pun in that sentiment. The supply of energy is an essential industry.

So, aptly named as Essential Energy is, they seem somewhat less convinced by the necessity of their workforce.

Most companies over time will expand and contract business operations in response to market conditions.

In such restructure, jobs may be added or subtracted alongside natural attrition, up-skilling, re-training, or redundancy.

But to hack off a third of a workforce doesn’t suggest any of the forethought those four options require.

What it does suggest, and quite loudly, is ‘desperate times, desperate measures’. The consequences will burden at least one in three, and possibly one in two, workers and their families in regional areas.

The communities where those workers live will also feel the impacts through a short-changed local economy.

Let’s look again at the employment estimate for Goulburn by Electrical Trades Union rep, Steve Butler (page 1):

“If there are 600 jobs to go across NSW, this equates to about 30 per cent of the workforce.

“There are about 100 Essential Energy electrical jobs in the Goulburn area, so ... about a reduction of 30 jobs across the Goulburn district.”

Assuming those 30 workers have significant others and families in one form or another, the number affected pushes into the hundreds.

From there, it’s not too great a calculation towards an economic loss of $3 million if they all have to move out of area.

Housing, transport, shops’, schools’ and municipal rates and fees … just a fraction of what is lost when people are lost to an area.

Butler also alerts us to less, or delayed, electrical maintenance, and what that might mean in severe weather. Yeah. Not great.

We just think, if you’re going to have the confidence to call your company ‘Essential’ – and indeed an energy company is a modern-day necessity – then you should call your workers essential, too.