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6:06 am, October 27th, 2025 - 17 comments
Categories: class, class war, climate change, disaster, workers' rights -
Tags: Powernet, The Great Turning, the long emergency
Electricity workers in Southland on a meal break on Sunday, photo from Powernet’s Facebook page.
On this Labour Day, a massive shout out to all the workers in Southland, Otago and other areas affected by the storms last week. Paid and volunteer, obvious and those in the background doing support for the frontline workers.
Three days after the ‘we’ve never seen wind like that’ storm, many parts of Southland and South Otago are still without power, with companies warning that it make take a week to get everyone back online.
This past week has shown the immense value and utter necessity of working class people. Can we please stop with the fucking workers over and the AI replacement bollocks? There are lots of people doing essential admin and management jobs right now as well, and we will always need the people who are willing to get their hands dirty. We were reminded of this in the pandemic, nothing functions without working class people.
I hope it’s also obvious the connection between the rights of working class people and the climate crisis. Leaving aside the climate politics for a minute, we’re in the long emergency now*. I really, really want workers to be well paid and supported, for the sake of them and their families, and for the sake of our communities. In emergencies and in the polycrisis transition work we all need to engage in.
Big shout out to Southland folk too, who are doing proud their long tradition of manaakitanga and helping each other out.
And the politics? While searching for an image for this post, I came across this in the Herald from July 2024 (archived version),
Downer power workers including technicians, line mechanics in job cut proposal, union says
A union says Downer Group’s plans to cut jobs from its power workforce could be disastrous for people caught up in storms or car crashes.
Joe Gallagher of E tū union said jobs for some technicians, line mechanics, faultmen and cable jointers could be at risk as Downer proposed cutting… 33 roles.
A spokeswoman for Downer, New Zealand’s biggest listed infrastructure business, said the proposal would potentially affect 0.32% of its workforce. The company employed 10,000 people. She was unable to comment further.
Downer New Zealand’s net profit fell 50% to $18.7 million in its 2023 financial year.
Gallagher said union members and the company were due to start a two-week consultation process from today.
Thirty-three out of 10,000 doesn’t sound like much. But it’s the constant chipping away at systems that need building up instead. Best we don’t leave essential workers and infrastructure in the hands of the market.
*Joanna Macy and David Korten call it The Great Turning, whereby we have the choice to shift from an industrial growth society, to a life-sustaining civilisation, rather than the now inevitable collapse if we continue on our current trajectory.
So much this. Why is our infrastructure and our ability to recover from disasters so poor? Decades of the above. Companies tell us over and over again how they have to pay ridiculous salaries and offer insanely generous working conditions to get the best senior managers, but they're happy to drive down pay and conditions for the skilled people who actually Do The Work. We have continual skills shortages in the workforce, which are then reflected in quality of infrastructure and disaster recovery capability, but the senior managers on the insane salaries never seem to imagine that paying more and offering better conditions might apply in that situation. In the meantime, the poor sods who get turned out to deal with disasters make the best of it with the limited number of people they have.
"but they're happy to drive down pay and conditions for the skilled people who actually Do The Work.
It's the neo liberal way.
The company then seeks to sub-contract their abilities less the ACC, Sick, annual and maternity leave.
Also while the state has conciously driven it's own capability through the floor, there isn't the skills, reource and capability as a buffer.
There must be another way of doing things.
I'd like to see a lot more infrastructure work returned to the public sector. People go on about private enterprise being more efficient than the public sector, but what it's more efficient at is maximising shareholder value. That kind of efficiency isn't much comfort when the water's undrinkable after a flood or the bridge you rely on is down.
All the pressure internationally is to replace a lot of workers with AI. But when the power is down, especially in the most urgent periods, and when power outages last for any time, AI is going to be of limited use.
I'm googling essential jobs and AI now. Most obvious one is transport. What happens to e-vehicles when the grid is down? That's not about AI so much as electrification, but having a driver who can troubleshoot beyond an AI driven vehicle is essential.
(presumably essential vehicles like fire engines and ambulances will remain petrol/diesel for the foreseeable future).
call centres seems the next most obvious one. We already have problems in NZ with this with some call centres having very long wait times, something that people needing to conserve cell phone battery power won't be able to do. Will AI improve that or make it worse? Being able to navigate difficult rural addresses and locations is something I expect AI can't cope with.
There is increasing use of drones in disaster relief, mainly to map out the damage and identify where humans are in need of help.
They can operate from a location at a distance from where the power is out, because they seem to use battery power. However there are dangers of power disruption for several reasons.
However, I don't think they will replace boots on the ground for relief, rescue, medical and injury help, etc.
Yes, when it comes to AI you need Public Enemy: "Don't… don't… don't… don't believe the hype." AI won't clear that foot of silt in your driveway or put those power poles back up again and reconnect the power lines. In theory, it could help by instructing unskilled people how to do that work, but you'd be mad to trust a large-language-model AI not to get you killed by telling you to do something fatal.
White-collar jobs like mine are under the most threat from AI, but even there, half of my job is to be the schmuck who takes responsibility, ie if things turn to shit everyone who's paid less than me can point to me and say "It was his decision." That's a good thing, and not really something an AI can take over (ie it can make decisions, but can't take responsibility for them).
IBM Training Manual, 1979
An obvious solution is to employ more people in constructing more localized renewable production and storage energy systems that could continue to function during disaster outages. They would of course have to be linked to the grid which would need AI control systems to optimize distribution as it returns to normal. Only monopolistic control of the energy production systems stand in the way, but even the conservative engineering community is seeing the necessity for this for future resilience. We'll need Onslow too, as some of our more astute neoliberals have indicated.
What's 'Onslow'?
https://www.mbie.govt.nz/building-and-energy/energy-and-natural-resources/low-emissions-economy/nz-battery
NZ pumped hydro storage project that National canned.
Because it was Labours idea and NACT's bribers, sorry, oil and gas lobbies, don't like it.
OK. Thanks.
As a Data/AI Engineer myself, I’m not too scared of AI taking my job or destroying the economy. It’ll be a fundamental shift and a challenge for some, sure, but it’s not all doom and gloom.
As I see it, AI will mostly replace low-value tasks, not whole jobs. Just like accountants didn’t disappear when spreadsheets or calculators came along. The work changes, and people move up the value chain.
The bigger issue is structural: improvements in efficiency over the past few decades haven’t flowed through to workers. They’ve just lined the pockets of the ownership and rent-seeking class. That’s what’s been corrosive: not technology itself, but the way the gains are captured and distributed.
If anything, that’s why we need stronger worker rights, fair pay, and real investment in people, so that when AI finally does reach maturity, it actually lifts everyone, not just the top few.
I am really grateful for fast response on the power. We just moved into a house in Invercargill on the 16th. A week later we had horizontal rain, high winds, trees down all over the place, the power off on a cold night, and the internet was reduced to very slow cellnet.
I was really glad that I hadn't moved The Standard back off the cloud (with its resource constraints) to its usual home on a old Ryzen7 system. I was also glad that I'd brought a camp stove with us.
This morning I spent 25 minutes looking at the price of backup generators if I do move it off the cloud.. And 20 minutes on co-hosting.
But also balancing that against the time to restore power and the risks of climate change on power infrastructure.
Downer are the team you want to get you out of civil emergency strife. They work hand in hand with NZDF and CDEM all over the country. 10,000 employees is about the same number as the entire NZDF regular force personnel. So that gives you a sense of an auxiliary state.
Right at the moment they are working on multiple arterial roads across the country, as well as restoring lines networks. Remarkably the Transpower feeds are holding throughout, and yes it's Downer that looks after those across about 1/3 the North Island.
One of the deepest and longest-lasting partnerships they have is with NZTA leading the alliance that manages the road between Te Anau and Milford. This is not a high traffic route but is our highest-profile international tourism route. Today they will be pro-actively exploding snow by helicopter to decrease massive avalanche risk.
They are the only business that essentially shadows the entire NZ state infrastructure from Antarctica to Chathams to the Pacific realm countries. So yes, while they have to cut their cloth when the government slashes its budgets by tens of percentages, but they are the business that understands the relationship between the state and climate change the best.
thanks, was hoping you would weigh in. That's encouraging about Downers. Why are they getting government funding?
The main thing I think we are missing is just how bad the climate crisis is going to get, and much sooner than people are expecting. Still a bit of a gap between planning and reality I think, although I know that is difficult given the nature of the beast.