Australia's Telstra has announced that it will be cutting 800 jobs as part of its five-year Transformation plan. Taking advantage of new capabilities in databases, systems and processes, several of Telstra's biggest business units have reduced duplication and bureaucracy, hence the job cuts.
The affected staff are based mainly in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
The changes will mean fewer senior and middle managers, as well as support staff, are required to back the sales and marketing efforts of the front-line staff.
"In November 2005, we announced every part of our business would be transformed to make it more productive and customer focused, including a large reduction in our work force," Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo said in a statement. "This announcement is part of Telstra's overall strategy."
Customer-facing roles are unaffected by the changes. As part of that evolution, the internet access portion of the BigPond business will be merged back into Telstra's central operations and business units.
The Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU) said the job cuts were a "huge blow", and that its union officials will have a meeting with Telstra next week
"When they start talking about streamlining, you know it's possibly going to involve job losses: you could not rule out more jobs going," CEPU assistant national secretary Bert Blackburn said, adding that "The job losses at Telstra have been pretty steady. The 800 announced today is pretty substantial but more than 50,000 have gone over the last 10 years."
Posted to the site on 18th September 2008
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/33696.php