SLD 10/180 - TELSTRA CUTS CUSTOMER SERVICE AGAIN
MEDIA RELEASE
Ref: SLD 10/180
29 July 2010
CEPU (Communications Electrical Plumbing
Communications Division representing Telstra,
Australia Post, Optus and other communications
sector employees.
CEPU Communications Division, Telecommunications and Services Branch, Victoria 139 Queensberry Street , Carlton
E-mail: cdtsvic@victs.cepu.asn.au Website: www.cepuconnects.org www.cepu.net.au
TELSTRA CUTS CUSTOMER SERVICE AGAIN
Telstra is continuing with its plans to “lay-off” as redundant, the 900 operational employees announced several weeks ago. These redundancies are separate from the recently announced intention to make over 300 senior and middle level managers redundant.
The laying off of the 900 hundred direct customer facing and other customer serving employees is a further attack on the customer service standards in Telstra, contrary to the undertakings of the CEO David Thodey.
For example, many “blue chip” companies will experience longer delays in service restoration and other aspects of their communications systems service as a result of making critical, highly skilled technical staff redundant, in Telstra’s data centres in Sydney and Melbourne.
As a further example, as a result of the highly skilled technical staff in Telstra’s Clayton Victoria, Global Operations Centre (GOC) being made redundant, Telstra has deliberately downgraded some of the “alert systems” at the GOC so that customer service failures and difficulties will only be addressed “in hours” and therefore customer service failures will not be corrected until the next day or until after the weekend.
More Telstra personnel in regional areas are being made redundant, reducing Telstra’s capacity to respond to service failures and provision of new services and further reducing spending/buying power in the country areas.
Figures from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman for 2009 showed an overall 130% increase in complaint-handling issues and a 72% increase in complaints about customer service in telecommunications companies including Telstra. And while the TIO subsequently reported a small drop in the complaints numbers for the first three months of 2010, the total number of complaints still exceeded 50,000 in the quarter.
Telstra has made an “in principle” agreement with NBN Co. and the Federal Government, to rollout a national fibre-to-the-home project, the biggest project since the Snowy River Scheme. The ink is not dry on the agreement and Telstra is shedding the very skilled labour that will be vital to the project and many of these skilled, trained workers will be lost to the industry.
“This is a management that is devoid of any ideas of how to solve the company’s current and future problems, other than relying on the “blunt weapon” of mass redundancies every year,” Says Len Cooper Victorian Branch Secretary of the CEPU. “The outcomes of these redundancies will further erode customer service in a company with an appalling record, and this is completely contrary to the CEO’s commitments to the public, the shareholders and the regulators,” says Len Cooper.
“The redundancies of critical customer serving staff must stop,” says Len Cooper.
Authorised by and further enquiries to:
LEN COOPER
Branch Secretary Vic/Communications Division National President
Communications Union (CEPU)
M. 0438 389 302
Ahs: 9330 2668
