CEPU Communications Union

Telstra management continue to campaign to sell their pay offer as "fair and reasonable in all the circumstances". At the same time they are declaring their "offer" as final again and therefore the best you are going to get. Despite that campaign by management, they squeal when the CEPU answers that campaign by pointing out that the pay offer is inadequate and discriminatory. They say the CEPU officials should be "impartial" and let members decide.

What sort of twisted logic is that? Management can sell their unilaterally declared pay increase but the union leadership is not allowed to put their views. The arrogance of this management is breathtaking is it not?

WHAT ARE THE FACTS?

Let us look at the facts.

If this is their "best offer" and nothing changes, then what can we conclude from that?

• employees in Telstra on an EBA, (a union negotiated agreement), will be and are thousands of dollars behind employees on an ECA (a non-negotiated, non-union agreement) doing the same work or on the same banding level. The thousands of dollars do not take into account losses in superannuation, penalties, allowances etc).
• apart from that employees on the EBA will be paid $1000 TO $2000 per annum (depending on designation), less than employees on the same band, on an ECA, by the end of the agreement period.

When management describes their "offer" as "fair and reasonable in all the circumstances" have they ever explained those "circumstances" to you? We doubt it.

So in effect they are saying to the union and the largely unionised employees on the EBA, that they should cop less pay and no back pay because they are on a union agreement. Could they possibly think that in a country like Australia, where people are supposed to have the right to choose a union if they wish, that such a choice could be qualified by accepting lower pay rates for exercising that choice?

CAN TELSTRA AFFORD THE EXTRA 2.5%?

Perhaps Telstra can't afford it some might say. Let's look at that.

Let us say that there are 10,000 employees on the EBA. Again let us say that the average wage was $70,000 per annum for those employees just to establish a point. Leaving the back pay aside, to pay the extra 2.5% to these employees would cost approx $17.5M in round figures per annum or $35M over the remaining two years of the agreement.

This is a company that every year announces a profit of just below or just above $4billion. Last year its profit (to July) was well over $4.1 Billion a near record. This was done on the back of huge productivity gains by Telstra employees and on the back of very small pay increases (pay cuts in real terms) for EBA employees.

This is a company that paid $40M to a non-performing former CEO and reported $1M “retention fee” for a current Senior Executive Manager!

Could it seriously be argued that Telstra cannot afford to pay? Of course not. We don't know anyone who is or would, argue that.

AGREEMENT? HOW FAIR DINKUM ARE THEY?

More than that. How much money do we think Telstra saved by refusing to negotiate for 12 months? Say from October 2008 to October 2009?

Again we use the 10,000 employees on $70,000 per annum, then over 12 months of non payment of the 4.5%, they saved $31.5M minus the 2.5% lump sum payment, which was paid supposedly to offset the fact that EBA employees didn’t receive an increase for 12 months.

So if we subtract $17.5M (2.5% lump sum for 10,000 employees on $70,000) from $31.5M that leaves $14M in savings for Telstra from October 2008 to October 2009.

So to pay the extra 2.5% to equalise the annual pay rate between the EBA and ECA over 2 years, costs Telstra very little in overall terms. Very little to make it “fair and reasonable in all of the circumstances” so to speak.

In a situation like that, considering "all the circumstances", if a company "offers" unionists an amount of money that discriminates against unionists are they really fair dinkum? Do they really want an agreement despite their high-blown rhetoric about wanting to achieve an agreement and despite their claims to be bargaining in good faith? Do they think we came down in the last shower?

Now the long industrial conflict in Telstra has:

*         caused productivity to plummet

*         caused company customer relations to sour even further as customer service plummets

*         cost Telstra a small fortune in extra costs due to the management actions taken to try to "mitigate" the strike and industrial action

*         seen a huge deterioration in management/staff relations

*         made day to day management of the workplace much more difficult.

How do these managers plan to solve these problems with such a discriminatory pay offer?

WHAT DO WE NEED TO PAY FOR OFFSETS?

Now to be fair, management might argue that due to the negotiations, the draft EBA is an improvement on the ECA and therefore EBA employees should expect less pay as an offset. Let us examine that.

What would be in an EBA now (if agreed to), that is not in the ECAs?

-         The right to arbitration in the event of disputes that can’t be settled between the parties.

-         A mechanism to monitor/regulate the PICM process and performance bonus system.

-         A modification to the Telstra Part A/Part B model to ensure that new employees who work in the Customer Field Workforce and the Technical Workforce will be employed on the EBA agreed banding system and pay rates.

-         The protective mechanisms in the redundancy agreement are retained with more emphasis on swaps and volunteers ahead of forced redundancies. The CEPU agreed to offsets in the redundancy processes which “paid” for the improvements anyway.

-         Increases in payments for essential customer servicing of 10%.

So even if Telstra’s argument is accepted, (and we don’t accept it), who says that the offset to these improvements is thousands of dollars in lost back pay, (super payments etc.), plus 2.5% less in annual pay increases, over the life of the agreement.

Telstra management itself says, in a letter to CEPU, that “we have not put an overall value on such matters”. How then can they conclude that their offer is “fair and reasonable in all the circumstances”?