Pacific Internet managing director Dennis Muscat described the move as a way to centralise technical services provisioning and streamline operations, and said the Sydney workers had been offered ample opportunity to remain with the company.
-We gave the Sydneysiders a chance to apply for the positions in Melbourne, but none of them took us up on the offer," Muscat said. Meanwhile, rather than signalling a scaling back of the Sydney operations, Muscat said the sales operations were to be expanded to keep up with growth in the market.
-The Sydney market is always about three months ahead of either Brisbane or Melbourne, so it is an important sales centre for us," Muscat said. -It makes sense to consolidate out technical operations in one spot, and that is all we are doing."
According to Muscat, only six people have been affected by the closure of technical operations in Sydney, however, other reports put the number as high as 24.
-It is never a great thing when people lose their jobs, but every effort was taken to make sure they were offered the opportunity to make the move," Muscat said.
Affected workers expect their jobs to be terminated within the next month.
That's a shame as that is where Zip (which later became Zip World then Pacific Internet) all started - at a pub in Glebe around 1996. Looks like Sydney is just treated as some consumer base for other parts of Australia to hit on. We're not all dumb up here...