NDC, which has contracted to 12 telcos -- including Telstra, Optus AAPT and TransACT in the last 12 months - began notifying staff three weeks ago in its first phase of job cuts that highlighted a voluntary redundancy package.
NDC manager of stakeholder relations, Stephen Whitworth, told ZDNet Australia that 150 staff had indicated interest in taking voluntary redundancy but -we'll have to make further cuts".
NDC has now commenced the second stage of retrenchments, in which it will -look very closely at the skills and number of workers we need to complete the work we have on the books," Whitworth said.
Whitworth said he could not confirm how many more jobs were on the line, but said they were across the board Australia-wide.
NDC has enhanced its voluntary redundancy package to include a career transition service, which will help workers into another role, in an effort to tempt more staff to leave the company voluntarily.
-The business of building contracting design networks is not as big as it was 18 months ago," Whitworth said. "Like most in the industry we have seen a very sharp and sudden fall in the volume of work we have on our books."
NDC has 5000 staff nationally.
NDC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Telstra. Telstra is NDC's main customer. The job loses are being caused in the main part by Telstra contracting to other companies & not to NDC.
Is it in Telstra's shareholders interest to contract to outside companies when there is capacity within a wholly owned subsidiary to upgrade/maintain the network?