Staff target new trustee in Fletcher Energy battle

Friday 24th August 2001

Norman Godden

By Deborah Hill Cone

The future of the controversial Fletcher Challenge Energy Employee Education Fund (EEF) was uncertain yesterday after the resignation of trustee Greig Gailey.

Mr Gailey, former chief executive of Fletcher Energy, has left to run failing Australian energy company Pasminco, leaving a hole on the EEF board for a company-appointed trustee to join Tim Henaghan and chairman Norman Godden.

Whoever is chosen to replace Mr Gailey will be in the hot seat - the appointment is seen by staff as a chance to get their own representative on to the board and have their views about the future of the fund listened to.

The EEF, a trust intended to benefit Fletcher Energy staff and their children, has been at the centre of a heated debate between staff and its trustees (NBR, July 13 and July 20).

Staff are angry about the trustees' plan to manoeuvre the EEF's $11 million in assets into a new vehicle with different aims. They argue the trustees should consult with staff, many of whom are being made redundant as the company becomes part of Royal Dutch/Shell.

"I have been a Fletcher Challenge employee for seven years - I thought I was working for an ethical company with honesty and integrity among its core values ... I feel angry and disappointed to learn I was mistaken," one staff member wrote in an August 16 joint letter to chairman Norman Godden.

"What a sorry mess and another nail in the coffin in the reputation of a company that at one time stood tall in the minds of many New Zealanders," another wrote.

The staff say the trust has never made a single grant and the trust deed does not specify a staff member who has been made redundant ceases to be a beneficiary.

Mr Godden did not return NBR's calls but earlier he had said the trustees had answered all staff queries about the trust.

A committee has been set up to represent the concerns of the Fletcher Energy's onshore Taranaki employees.

"The lack of proper consultation with the beneficiaries, the scant information that has been provided and the unsatisfactory answers to previous questions are all serving to increase the already high level of concerns that exists regarding the administration of the fund by the trustees," an August 16 letter from Fletcher Energy sustainable business services manager Rachel Palmer to Mr Godden said.

The committee has asked either Ms Palmer or Fletcher Energy Taranaki Onshore general manager Dennis Washer be consulted about who will replace Mr Gailey.

"This is to provide us with confidence that the next appointed trustee has employee interests 'at heart'," a memo from Ms Palmer to Shell transition manager Andrew Flett said.

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