CWU slams Telstra's shock job cuts announcement
The CWU says it has been shocked by the scale of the 1400 job cuts announced by Telstra on Wednesday 14 June.
But it is also angry that a full half day went by before the CWU and other Telstra unions were formally notified of the proposals, despite the fact that the media had been running the story since early morning.
So much for consultation!
Telstra always argues that it can’t brief its employees’ representatives before it announces a decision and that its first responsibility is to the stock exchange, then directly to its employees themselves.
But setting aside any flaws in these arguments (after all employees have chosen to be represented by their unions), they hardly explain the extent of the delay on this occasion.
Disorganisation? Or a conscious disregard for the rights and choices of union members? The CWU believes the answer is clear enough.
As for the cuts themselves, the CWU considers that these are clearly being driven by top-down financial targets rather than actual functional redundancies. The fact that Telstra has flagged some 500 job losses later this year but does not yet know quite where they will come from speaks for itself.
This is a recipe for future resource shortfalls such as those that led to Telstra’s needing to introduce “rostered” i.e. compulsory overtime in the field workforce last year.
Someone always pays for this sort of mismanagement – either employees, through work intensification or customers, though delays in service, or both.
