Telstra workers fear redundancies

UNIONISED Telstra workers fear contractors from Indian outsourcer Wipro have been moved in to muscle them out.

The workers have been involved in an industrial struggle to secure better wages and conditions.

Since early this year 22 Wipro contractors have been brought in to undertake low-level maintenance work within the telco's Next Generation Operations. The division is responsible for maintenance of servers and services of financial institutions including National Australia and Commonwealth banks.

The division has been the focal point of a Communications Electrical Plumbing Union industrial campaign to secure a company-wide agreement for Telstra workers stuck on the Howard government's individual contracts.

Union action earlier this yearresulted in poor network performance for big-ticket customers such as the Commonwealth Bank.

In late August, Telstra management flagged its intention to make 37 workers within the NGO division redundant. It planned to make the redundancies without consultation with workers or union officials, which prompted the union to bring up the issue directly with Telstra management.Now the union says its members in the NGO are being unfairly targeted for their participation in industrial action.

"Regarding the Wipro company performing Telstra employees' work, we are now hearing that management is about to implement a SWAG to make large numbers of employees in that area redundant," CEPU divisional president Len Cooper wrote to Telstra human resources manager Frank Gerdtz in September.

"If this is an accurate assessment, where does this leave the good faith bargaining and the supposed principles being applied by the 'new' Telstra."

After increased pressure from the union, Telstra backed away from its initial redundancy plan and instead offered staff in the NGO the option of voluntary redundancy. Three weeks ago 11 NGO staff had taken up the offer.

"The roles affected were high-level IT workers ... . They were also significant players in the industrial actions ... " Mr Cooper said.

Sources in Telstra management indicated that the telco planned a second wave of redundancies aimed at hitting the original 37 figure.

The concern among NGO staff is that the Wipro workers are being used as cheap replacements. They are typically paid about $50,000 a year, compared with Telstra NGO workers' pay of $80,000 to $90,000 a year.

Telstra says the Wipro staff were only brought in to carry out low-level work in NGO, but sources indicate the Wipro staff are being trained to undertake the higher-level IT work performed by full-time Telstra staff.

Telstra denies the contracting out and redundancies in the NGO division are linked to the industrial action over stalled pay negotiations. "Using Wipro has had no effect whatsoever on our staffing levels. We have engaged Wipro for a short, fixed-term contract which we expect will be completed in June 2010," a Telstra spokesman said.