The union says it has confirmed the forced termination of 36 workers at 23 Essential Energy locations in NSW, including two at Bathurst and one each at Orange and Blayney, in what a union official describes as a “softening-up period”.

It comes after the Electrical Trades Union said the Fair Work Commission (FWC) had given the NSW Government-owned company the power to cut at least 600 jobs by July 2018 and a further 1000 jobs by 2019.

“This is the softening-up period – to get through the Christmas period,” United Services Union general secretary Graeme Kelly said on Wednesday.

Essential Energy employees at Bathurst held a depot meeting on Wednesday to discuss their options.

Mr Kelly said the union would be “taking the view of members to crossbenchers, Labor, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, Greens and Reverend Fred Nile after Christmas to see what sort of pressure can be exerted on the government”.

Essential Energy chief executive officer John Cleland said in a statement that “rumours about future workforce reductions and depot closures are purely speculation at this stage”.

“On the day the Fair Work Commission’s Workplace Determination was delivered, Essential Energy had 31 redeployees who had remained employed without a substantive role for more than 12 months,” he said.

“The Commission’s decision, which was effective immediately, directed that redeployees had the option to leave the business in the next four weeks and receive up to 72 weeks’ payment plus entitlements, or stay on and continue to be paid for the next six months with an option to take a maximum 44-week exit payment at any time.”

Unrelated to the FWC decision, according to the statement, Essential Energy notified 10 senior contract managers and eight employees under a separate Enterprise Agreement that their roles were redundant as part of reforms begun in 2012.