Electrical Trades Union organiser Mick Koppie says hundreds of devastated workers in the region have been kept in the dark about when the NSW government-owned corporation may start slashing jobs.
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He said union members were shocked at the Fair Work Commission's recent decision to overturn a ban that will allow Essential Energy to force 600 redundancies by 2018.
The commission had said the electricity distributor was a business and "not a social service".
As a response to these "massive blows," Mr Koppie scheduled a meeting with the some-90 staff at the Queanbeyan depot for Tuesday morning, but it was cancelled as workers were not entitled to protected action under their enterprise agreement.
He had hoped the meeting would cover the union's next steps over the "unprecedented job cuts" that he said would lose dozens of specialist jobs in Queanbeyan, hurt small communities and put additional pressure on the remaining workforce.
"What this means is over the next four to five years essential energy will be half the size it is now," he said.
"In places like Boorowa, Yass and Harden the service will virtually disappear. The income of the town will reduce and the reliability of the service will drop so where you used to get power restored in hours it will take days."
Essential Energy's chief executive officer John Cleland said the company had 222 employees at Queanbeyan, Goulburn, Cooma, Yass and Braidwood depots and offices.
He said he had "no immediate plans" to implement the forced redundancies, other than 30 whose roles had already been made redundant.
"Our executive team has spent the past week visiting more than 60 depots and offices across NSW to update employees on future plans and remove as much uncertainty as possible," Mr Cleland said.
Deputy Premier John Barilaro said the Fair Work Commission's decision was about clarifying working conditions that had been "under a cloud" since the previous agreement expired in June 2015.
"Importantly, Essential Energy is required to go out and talk to their workforce about these changes – I understand that 60 meetings will be held with Essential Energy staff across the state to talk through this determination," he said.
"The Department of Industry has been talking with Essential Energy about support for any workers who are made redundant and the NSW Government will help workers assess their current skills – then assist them with up-skilling or reskilling, and trying to find a job."
