The Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU) is hoping up to 200 workers targeted for retrenchment will gather outside Telstra's Melbourne headquarters at 12.15pm, to highlight the large number of job losses within Telstra over the last five years and the imminent layoffs over the next three to six months if the Liberal Party sells off the 50.1 percent of Telstra still in public ownership.
CEPU organiser Steve Booth told ZDNet Australia that 300 jobs are to be shed in Victoria alone at Telstra's network design company NDC.
Those invited to attend the rally are workers who have been targeted by Telstra/NDC for retrenchment, despite the telco's insistence that no further job cuts are in the pipeline, according to Booth.
-We want to highlight that these jobs are under direct threat now," he added.
Telstra was reticent to reveal up-coming retrenchment arrangements.
-It's their right to have a rally," Telstra public relations manager, employee relations, Megan Lane, told ZDNet. -It is an election period and the Union has obviously got a clear argument and message it is trying to send." However, Telstra has no plans, -other than those previously announced," to shed staff, she said. -As of today there are no further decisions on job movements."
NDC's Stephen Whitworth told ZDNet in an interview late last week that no workers have left -under management-induced redundancies".
-We're still working through the process of resource rebalancing," he said. -There's no mass date when everyone will be asked to leave."
Whitworth confirmed, however, that about 150 employees have opted to take voluntary redundancy packages, he stressed that NDC is taking a -fairly sensitive approach" to redundancies.
Nevertheless, disillusionment about -where Telstra is taking things" is rife, particularly in NDC, Booth said.
Although Telstra as a whole made about AU$4 billion in profit in the last financial year it has withdrawn AU$700 million from the NDC budget, the net result being that jobs are going to be lost, according to Booth.
-No matter how sensitive you are, it doesn't alleviate the fact that it was Telstra's decision to withdraw a lot of money from the NDC budget," Booth said.
The Communications and Public Sector Union (CPSU) estimates that Telstra has already canned between 1500 and 2000 positions as part of its on-going job shedding program announced March last year, which will see a total of 10,000 heads on the chopping block before the end of June 2002.
-There's no doubt that's it's been a very tough few years in the telecommunications industry, and for Telstra aswell," Telstra's Lane said. And, -like every other business, we're constantly reviewing resources, including staffing levels, against business needs."
However, Lane declined to reveal how many jobs the telco had already shed as part of its on-going redundancy plan, saying only, -we are tracking to expectations for that target of redundancies".
