United Services Union general secretary Graeme Kelly said 36 workers across the state had been told they were being made redundant – ahead of a planned 600 jobs to be cut by June 2018.

Mr Kelly said that included one each in Orange and Blayney and two in Bathurst and Dubbo.

He said the cuts were on top of the 600 jobs the company planned to cut by forced redundancies by June 2018.

Jobs to go include electrical technicians, power line workers, operations managers, senior customer service staff, meter readers, engineers, administration workers and specialist tradespeople.

However, Essential Energy chief executive officer John Cleland said 31 “redeployees” who had been employed without a role for more than 12 months had been given the option to leave the company.

And he said a further 10 senior contract managers and eight workers employed under a separate Enterprise Agreement had been made redundant.

“We recognise that organisational change can be challenging, particularly during a workforce reduction,” Mr Cleland said on Wednesday.

Electrical Trades Union organiser Mark Buttigieg arranged a meeting of workers at Essential Energy’s Orange depot on Wednesday afternoon.

He said workers did not want to be identified publicly as they feared losing their jobs.

Mr Buttigieg said the union believed up to 50 jobs would be lost in Orange and Bathurst.

He called on the National party, and in particular the member for Bathurst Paul Toole, to intervene and demand local jobs be saved.

“The only way this can be turned around is by political intervention.

“We will be campaigning on this until the next state election. March 2019 is not that far away.

“This is a publicly owned company that is meant to be run in the community’s interest,” he said.