By Tim E. Stewart

At stop-work meetings on October 8, more than 3000 Telstra members of the Community and Public Sector Union voted overwhelmingly in favour of a national 24-hour strike on October 17.

The Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union, covering mainly field staff, has also held mass meetings and adopted a campaign of “work to rule” and “other selected actions” to be determined by state branches.

The industrial action has been sparked by a proposed enterprise agreement designed to prepare Telstra for partial privatisation. The agreement abolishes 12 awards and 80 agreements, replacing them with a “core award” containing only the 20 “allowable matters” under the federal government's Workplace Relations Act. Those conditions that can't be covered in the core award will be included in company policy, allowing management to alter them at will.

Telstra is proposing a six-day working week, from 6.30am to 7pm Monday to Friday, and 7am to 6pm on Saturdays with only a 15% loading (it is currently 50%). Management will reserve the right to roster half- and full-day shifts during these hours with only seven days' notice.

Telstra also wants to eliminate internal promotion and disciplinary appeal processes, and remove the rights of union officials in dispute avoidance and resolution. As well, it is proposing to end access to facilities needed by union delegates to hold meetings, distribute bulletins and attend certified training courses.

Telstra is also proposing to re-grade job classifications according to a system which benchmarks salaries against market rates and values responsibility for budgets and use of technology over public contact skills. This means that the majority of customer service staff (overwhelmingly women) could have their jobs valued lower and therefore be under pressure to take on more work.

Telstra will not rule out the introduction of individual contracts and performance based pay.

Already, significant changes to work practices have taken place, particularly amongst customer service staff. Pay is already linked to productivity improvements, and failing to meet sales and performance targets can lead to daily harassment by supervisors and ultimately disciplinary action.

Targets and performance monitoring are worked out by senior management and presented to staff at one-on-one “coaching” sessions with their supervisor every month. In one call centre, performance in one area was forced up by more than 300%.

Telstra's only offer in return for these trade-offs is an immediate 2% wage rise and a once-off cash bonus linked to productivity improvements over the next 12 months.

Yet in its September internal staff bulletin, Our Future, Telstra announced a 1996-97 operating profit before tax of $3.8 billion, up 17.5% on the previous year. At the same time, 12,000 staff were cut, with another 7000 to go this year. Telstra plans to shed 25,500 jobs over four years.

A bulletin circulated by the Democratic Socialist Party supporting the October 17 strike points out that Rob Cartwright, formerly of mining company CRA and well-known for his union-busting role in the Weipa dispute in 1995, was recruited to smash the Telstra unions in order to lower the company's wages and conditions bill.

The driving force behind these attacks is privatisation, it says: “All the trade-offs in working conditions, the erosion of pay levels, the outsourcing, staff contracting, and the `resource re-balancing' have little to do with providing better service to ordinary users but everything to do with making a huge profit for the big investors in Telstra”.

[Tim Stewart is a CPSU Telecommunications Section councillor.]

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