Since July last year the Communications Electrical Plumbing Union has been trying to secure a company-wide agreement for Telstra workers stuck on the Howard government’s Australian workplace agreements.

But under the leadership of former Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo, the telco refused to enter into negotiations, prompting the CEPU to launch a string of industrial stoppages that started in December.

The stoppages targeted key areas of Telstra’s transformation project and included 24-hour and 48-hour work stoppages and bans on overtime.

The union says the action has caused long delays in essential maintenance of Telstra products, including its Foxtel and Big Pond services, and has also caused irregular disruption to Eftpos and autoteller services, which in turn has led to complaints from the Commonwealth Bank and various commercial outlets.

Despite the CEPU’s continued claims that its industrial action has affected several Telstra projects, the telco has strongly denied that the action has had any impact.

Now the CEPU has released Telstra correspondence showing that the telco has been scrambling to keep up with the ill effects of the union’s tactics.

“We need to expose Telstra management’s cover-up of the industrial action impact and thus its deception of customers and shareholders,” CEPU divisional president Len Cooper wrote in a letter to CEPU members.

One of the main fronts of the industrial war has been waged on Telstra’s Next Generation Operations, a division responsible for maintenance of servers and services for the financial transactions of financial institutions, including National Australia Bank and Commonwealth.

The division also oversees the design, installation and commissioning of business customer internet protcol services and products.

Despite Telstra’s insistence the industrial action has not damaged the telco’s business or affected its customers, internal correspondence unearthed by the CEPU suggests otherwise.

“Please be aware that Assurance have been impacted by IA action today and are implementing the NGO mitigation plan,” Telstra NGO team manager Steve Carnaby wrote to Telstra employees earlier this year.

Assurance is Telstra’s maintenance unit within the NGO.

The CEPU claims it has also been able to hamper the performance of one of NGO’s flagship products, Telstra’s Argent Connect network.

Argent is a service for retail businesses that uses Telstra’s ISDN network to support voice, data and Eftpos services.

The CEPU claims it was able to halt support of the system by removing a small workforce responsible for the maintenance of Argent’s servers.

In email correspondence obtained by The Australian, Commonwealth Bank payments and business technology executive general manager Paul Rickard complains about the poor performance of the Argent system.

“Don’t know whether it has been brought to your attention or not, however, the performance of the Argent network over the last several weeks has been nothing short of abysmal. The grief this is causing a number of our merchant customers (and yours), let alone my staff having to deal with their calls, is major,” Mr Rickard wrote on January 21 to then Telstra enterprise and government boss David Thodey.

Mr Rickard wrote again on January 22, saying: “To highlight the seriousness of the situation, I have one major client looking for compensation and have started to receive media inquiries.”

In a flurry of emails seen by The Australian, Telstra’s management scrambles to fix the performance issues affecting the CBA, but chooses not to reveal that industrial action may play a part in the problem.

“We have not conveyed to CBA the risks due current industrial actions and do not propose to address them directly,” Telstra enterprise and government service manager Gordon Herriot wrote to Telstra managers on January 22.

Telstra maintains the industrial action has not affected the telco because it has been able to successfully mitigate the damage by mobilising work teams to cover any striking staff.

“Industrial action to date has had almost zero impact,” a Telstra spokesman said.

But the CEPU said Telstra’s denials were bunk.

“The issue is does Telstra really care about its customers? Because if it did then it wouldn’t be trying to cover up the impact, it would be trying to solve the problem,” Mr Cooper said.

Whatever the impact of the outages, Telstra’s new conciliatory approach under Mr Thodey, as the new chief executive, has seen the telco’s icy treatment towards the union begin to thaw.

In a first sign that the industrial war might be approaching a ceasefire, the telco, just two weeks ago, invited employees currently on AWAs, to enter into “good-faith bargaining” for new collective agreements.

Both the CEPU and Telstra met last Friday to begin the discussions but it appears as though the end of the industrial action is still a way off.

“It is evident that there is a clear change in direction now that Sol has gone and it’s evident they want to reach an agreement,” Mr Cooper said.

“They want the industrial action stopped, but we put to them that it shouldn’t matter as they always say it has had no effect so far.”

Makes you start to think Telstra are masters of spin doctoring!

Telstra workers fear contractors from Indian outsourcer Wipro have been moved in to muscle them out.

The workers have been involved in an industrial struggle to secure better wages and conditions.

Since early this year 22 Wipro contractors have been brought in to undertake low-level maintenance work within the telco’s Next Generation Operations. The division is responsible for maintenance of servers and services of financial institutions including National Australia and Commonwealth banks.

The division has been the focal point of a Communications Electrical Plumbing Union industrial campaign to secure a company-wide agreement for Telstra workers stuck on the Howard government’s individual contracts.

Union action earlier this yearresulted in poor network performance for big-ticket customers such as the Commonwealth Bank.

Now the union says its members in the NGO are being unfairly targeted for their participation in industrial action.

In late August, Telstra management flagged its intention to make 37 workers within the NGO division redundant. It planned to make the redundancies without consultation with workers or union officials, which prompted the union to bring up the issue directly with Telstra management.

“Regarding the Wipro company performing Telstra employees’ work, we are now hearing that management is about to implement a SWAG to make large numbers of employees in that area redundant,” CEPU divisional president Len Cooper wrote to Telstra human resources manager Frank Gerdtz in September.

“If this is an accurate assessment, where does this leave the good faith bargaining and the supposed principles being applied by the ‘new’ Telstra.”

After increased pressure from the union, Telstra backed away from its initial redundancy plan and instead offered staff in the NGO the option of voluntary redundancy. Three weeks ago 11 NGO staff had taken up the offer.

“The roles affected were high-level IT workers … . They were also significant players in the industrial actions … ” Mr Cooper said.

Sources in Telstra management indicated that the telco planned a second wave of redundancies aimed at hitting the original 37 figure.

The concern among NGO staff is that the Wipro workers are being used as cheap replacements. They are typically paid about $50,000 a year, compared with Telstra NGO workers’ pay of $80,000 to $90,000 a year.

Telstra says the Wipro staff were only brought in to carry out low-level work in NGO, but sources indicate the Wipro staff are being trained to undertake the higher-level IT work performed by full-time Telstra staff.

Telstra denies the contracting out and redundancies in the NGO division are linked to the industrial action over stalled pay negotiations. “Using Wipro has had no effect whatsoever on our staffing levels. We have engaged Wipro for a short, fixed-term contract which we expect will be completed in June 2010,” a Telstra spokesman said.

Telstra may see short term gains that look good in their current balance sheets but with over 100,000 complaints a month – Long term pain is coming for Telstra and boy aren’t the other Telco’s getting ready to pounce!

As you know Telstra moved most of its call centres offshore! Now don’t be surprised if a problem that would normally have taken 10-15 mins to fix before, can now take up to 2 hrs and still not be fixed properly!

By the way get used to being transferred to 5 -15 different departments re- identify your self each time and also expect to get cut off at least 3 times in the process – Then guess what you then have to start again and again and again!  It’s a disgrace.

Why is this happening? Simply because there are language barriers between offshore consultants, poor training and not having a clue about the Australian marketplace and it’s needs.

Now we finally have the new Telstra CEO wanting us to tell them what’s wrong?  What makes Telstra think their time is more valuable than ours? Why would you even bother responding to them and take up your own valuable time?

Why did he say that? Simply because its a spin doctoring technique that takes all the pressure off them!

Telstra knows exactly what needs to be done – it all comes down to is saving money! Short term yes they are saving money – Long Term definately not!

Testra will be losing customers in the next few years faster than the cartoon character ” Road Runner.”

So What is the solution?  Tthe first thing they need to do is bring the whole project back to Australia and model it on the CBA & ANZ banking call centres where you can be assured that you will speak to an Australian based operator every single time – 24 Hrs a day 7 days a week!

Does telstra even offer outside business hour support in most departments?  Of course not.

So there Zippo! Problem solved move all call centres back to Australia and guess what? You have just eliminated the the main source of all their problems.

Att: Telstra CEO – it’s not rocket science, just common sense, you typical ridiculously overpaid / over rated clown!

* The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of  Smart Pro Security.

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