Telstra field workforce cuts to hit regional areas
The CWU and other Telstra unions met with Telstra on Thursday 15 June for an initial briefing on the sweeping restructure announced the previous day.
The move is expected to lead to the loss of some 1400 positions across the company. The cuts come on top of a reported decline in Telstra employee numbers of some 1100 in the first six months of the current financial year.
Hardest hit will be Telstra Operations which is set for a net reduction of some 349 roles now and a further possible 500 roles by the end of 2017.
Of the 479 current roles going out of Operations, over half (259) are coming out of Customer Service Delivery (CSD). And of these, about half (145) are from Field Service Delivery (FSD), mainly from regional areas. While there are new roles being created in some parts of CSD as a whole, there are no new roles being created in FSD to offset these regional job losses.
Telstra says that the redundancies reflect declining work volumes, largely due to NBN migration. The CWU pointed out that Telstra is still hiring contractors in at least some of the areas where it is claiming that work is falling off.
Members are also telling the CWU that there has been no slowdown in work in areas where job numbers are being reduced.
The union is seeking membership feedback from all areas affected by these cuts so that we can effectively represent these issues to Telstra during the consultation period. Union officials will be meeting with Telstra again on Tuesday 20 June.
