John Ellery, head of the Bendigo branch of the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union, said the attempt to split the company off into a separate entity had been a complete disaster, resulting in a massive loss of morale and talent from regional Australia's core telecommunications support team.
"It's been an absolute disaster the way they've had a solid, skilled and enthusiastic workforce and they've just turned it into an organisation at its lowest ebb. Everyone there has lost faith in the management," said Ellery.
The four-year separation process has resulted in the cull of 3,000 jobs from NDC's ranks. It had been expected to bear fruit for Telstra in form of more competitive network maintenance outsourcing market and AU$1.3 billion sale of the company.
Telstra's most promising attempt to sell NDC, to Leightons, failed in July 2001 and was shortly followed by the resignation of NDC CEO Bob Pentecost. Pentecost was replaced by a senior Telstra manager, Phil Hastings.
Telstra chief executive officer, Ziggy Switkowski today officially announced that NDC would be folded back into Telstra, saying it was no longer commercially prudent to maintain NDC as separate entity.
Switowski said the carrier had anticipated that increasing amount of NDCs work would be sourced from outside Telstra.
"The outlook for the industry in which NDC operates remains soft and the overwhelming proportion of NDC's work still is derived from Telstra," Dr Switkowski said.
Telstra is starting integration of the administration of the companies immediately. Telstra has pledged that NDC's accounting structure will be kept separate to ensure that it competes for Telstra contracts on an equal footing with other network maintenance companies.
