THE union which represents Ergon workers in the region has vowed the community will not be inconvenienced during blackouts in the coming weeks if members take planned strike action.

Ergon workers at an Electrical Trades Union (ETU) meeting in Toowoomba yesterday voted in favour of stoppages in the near future, after talks with the supplier over a new enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) broke down this week.

The news comes as local anger builds over delays in repairs to downed power poles and lines caused by strong winds, including during last weekend's storm, which left some locals without power for almost 24 hours.

The ETU has served a log of claims on Ergon, including pay demands and a call for a review of staffing levels.

Of particular concern to the union is a lack of communications staff at the control centre in Rockhampton, which co-ordinates storm damage repairs for the whole of southern Queensland.

The union says the two controllers rostered on any given shift is inadequate when major storms hit, in line with local criticism over delays in Rocky operators authorising repairs in the Warwick area.

ETU south-west Queensland organiser Dan McGaw said the Ergon workers' fight was "not with the public" and gave an assurance any work stoppages would not unduly affect customers.

But he said strike action was looking likely as talks with Ergon over the new EBA had "reached a stalemate".

"Ergon has failed to respond on our log of claims and south-west delegates (yesterday) voted in favour of commencing industrial action," Mr McGaw said.

"It is not known at this stage when it might take place, as we have to follow a process through Fair Work Australia.

"But we have always said our fight is with Ergon and not with the public of Queensland and if action is taken there will be staff on standby should unplanned outages occur due to the weather."

Mr McGaw confirmed the ETU held major concerns about control centre staffing levels in Rockhampton and said if not dealt with the situation would "only get worse".

He said local suspicions that Ergon crews ready to go to work restoring power after storms were spending hours waiting for clearance from Rockhampton while householders stumbled around in the dark were on the money.

"Communications have been centralised up there for several years now and the aim was to take some of the onus and workload off local crews," Mr McGaw said.

"Previously most of the jobs were authorised and controlled by the local depots.

"Obviously for the controllers at Rockhampton there are peaks and troughs but when the storms do hit the phone lines get jammed.

"You can have 10 blokes from local depots trying to get through to the two operators at the same time and that is always going to cause a delay."