TUANZ drops in-house events staff

Events staff made redundant, CEO and finance manager remain

Surrounded by recent rumours of its financial viability, the Telecommunications Users’ Association (TUANZ) intends to prune its staff, leaving only CEO Paul Brislen and a finance manager in the organisation.

It has given notice to the events coordinator, events manager and business development manger, who are expected to leave after three months.

“We were spending a lot of our time running and managing events,” Brislen says “and they don’t make us much money, to be blunt. I thought, and our board agrees, that it was quite a distraction from our core purpose, which is to represent the telco users.”

In future, TUANZ will only run events for which it has secured sponsorship, he says. Support staff for those events will be contracted in as needed.

“We are fully funded by our members,” Brislen adds. “If we stick to the budget that I’ve got, we can live quite comfortably on the membership income.”

Rumours went round earlier this month that the organisation was about to wind up, but Brislen and chairman Pat O’Connell squelched them. This was following the organisations unsuccessful application for a grant of $75,000 from InternetNZ funds, to help finance a specific project – a research unit that would supply answers to public and media inquiries.