Telstra: making life harder
By Leo Wellin
Cutting a birthday cake on the day you announce your resignation after being denied a redundancy is giving life a cruel twist. Such is the experience of Bill Bogan, a Telstra employee for more than 37 years.
Bogan was redeployed from the Customer Equipment Division of Telstra, which provided handsets and networking hardware for small businesses. Last year the CED was "sold" to Plestel — a Telstra subsidiary company.
Under Plestel, the provisioning and servicing of small business telephone systems remains essentially the same — the same computing systems are used for ordering, dispatching and billing. But outsourcing provided the best opportunity for Telstra to cut hundreds of staff and remove many working conditions.
At the time, technicians and administrative staff around the country where given the "opportunity" of taking up a Plestel contract or being redeployed into another area of Telstra. In Brisbane, CED office staff were told they could keep their jobs if they moved to Melbourne — relocating at their own expense.
In Bogan's area, most people were long-term Telstra employees. Redundancies were selectively offered. The manager and supervisors got redundancy packages. Bogan was told, from as high up as the state manager, that his skills were highly valued and that he was "too useful" for the organisation to lose, however.
After Bogan was relocated, he began to suffer from a number of physical problems and had a hip replacement. Unhappy that he wasn't offered a voluntary redundancy and sick of working in a stressful workplace, he saw no option but to resign.
Before the latest enterprise agreement, Telstra's budget provided for small ceremonies to mark promotions, long service anniversaries or retirement of staff. This has now gone.
When asked quietly why even a framed certificate wasn't made for Bogan, a supervisor responded: "We have a commitment to our shareholders, and we're over budget in all areas".
Staff in the new area where Bogan was redeployed were incensed that an employee of such long standing was shown so little regard. Co-workers provided food for his official farewell party and generously pitched in for a watch, which they presented the next day without inviting Telstra management.
The day that Bogan left, without a gold tie pin or even a letter recognising decades of service, an e-mail was circulated with well wishes to a manager who had been employed in the same building less than a year. "In the short time Rob has been with us, he has become a valued member of the Telstra team ... and we will miss his expertise and enthusiasm", the manager wrote.
The only words management had for Bogan at his birthday-cum-farewell ceremony were, "Telstra is glad to have provided 38 years of employment for you".
After 37 and a half years of service, first with the Post-Master General's Department, and then Telecom, Telecom Australia and Telstra, Bogan should have been eligible for a redundancy package of more than $100,000 when his place of work disappeared last year. Instead, this story of outsourcing and redeployment — and the associated loss of jobs and conditions in the recent enterprise agreement — leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of staff whose
lives are being made harder by Telstra.