Telstra to boost field workforce
Telstra will engage 1,000 new Communications Technicians to meet the shortfall it is facing in its field workforce operations.
According to Customer Service Delivery (CSD) Executive Director Brian Harcourt, 600 of the new workers have commenced training and 140 have already “hit the field”. The plan is to bring all 1,000 on stream by the beginning of next year.
Just over half of those new jobs will be in NSW with 151 in Queensland, 110 in Victoria and Tasmania and about 100 in South Australia. Western Australia will get 43 new technicians.
The CWU always welcomes the creation of new jobs in the industry and, right now, in Telstra in particular. Telstra field workforce employees are at present overstretched due to Telstra’s “just-in-time” resourcing of its field operations, including its NBN contracts.
But there is a sting in the tail.
It appears that fewer than 200 of these jobs will be within Telstra and these will be 2 year fixed term positions at Band 2 and Band 3 level. The rest of these new roles will be filled by workers sub-contracted to ISGM, Telstra’s external supplier of install/maintain labour.
The CWU has previously expressed concerns about the adequacy of the training provided to ISGM contractors and, more broadly, about the whole model which sees young people provided with minimal training and then expected to turn themselves into (supposedly) independent contractors.
We will be pursuing these issues with both Telstra and ISGM.
