CPSU confuses members in Telstra strike
By Leo Wellin
For the first time in 10 years, the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), which represents 10,000 staff at Telstra, coordinated a successful 24-hour strike against giant phone company on October 17.
Picket lines were established at all major Telstra workplaces, with the strike being supported by around 90% of workers at most call centres. Telstra management claim only 3470 staff took action. The CPSU said that 13,000 members stayed away from work.
A new enterprise agreement proposed by Telstra includes the elimination of most award conditions, crippling reductions in the rights of union officials in the workplace, moving to a six-day working week with low or no penalty rates, a reclassification of pay scales against "market rates" and the possible introduction of individual contracts.
Both before and after the strike, there has been widespread confusion about how strike action would affect the government's float of one-third of Telstra. A hyped-up Telstra "road show" touring the country has promised staff thousands of dollars in interest-free loans, 4-for-1 share offers and free shares in an effort to convince staff that they have a stake in the privatisation.
Instead of pointing to partial privatisation as the central reason that the enterprise agreement is so rotten, the CPSU leadership included demands for "an initial allocation of shares at a reduced rate" and "a staff share issue paid as a bonus dependent upon Telstra performance".
Shirts printed for picket lines in Queensland read: "You can float Telstra, but don't sink the workers".
With management standing firm on all key planks of the enterprise agreement, CPSU negotiators have already agreed to come up with proposals that fit Telstra's "business plan objectives".
On the day of the strike, the official CPSU bulletin stated, "We want to have an acceptable Enterprise Agreement and we are willing to consider changes to job classifications and gradings and negotiate on other conditions".