Telstra yesterday announced it is axing 1329 jobs from various parts of the business – a move the union says will undoubtedly impact the telco’s ability to deliver a quality service to its customers.

The job cuts – which are part of one the largest job purges in Australian corporate history – are the latest in a string of large-scale cuts plaguing the once-iconic telco.

The Union says the cuts are a disgraceful attack on the workforce and Australian customers of the telco.  

CEPU Communications Divisional National President, Shane Murphy, said the once-iconic Australian telco is being torn apart by the current Telstra executive team.

“These job cuts are on a completely unsustainable scale,” Mr Murphy said.

“You simply can’t cut such a large number of jobs and keep providing a quality service to customers.

“Almost 1400 workers yesterday woke up to news they’re out of a job – many of who have decades of experience. The ripple effect of devastation that has among families and the community cannot be underestimated.

“200 of those jobs are technical roles with two thirds of them carrying out field-based work such as telephony and broadband service provisioning, fault repairs and outage restoration. Their numbers have already been cut to the bone and this latest round of cuts is without a doubt the sounding of the death knell for that part of the business.

“Telstra CEO, Andy Penn, is running our once iconic telco into the ground. It’s devastating to see customers and workers being treated with such disrespect.

“A number of roles, with an actual head-count not yet clear, will be affected by the accelerated off-shoring of customer service work – including key complaint resolution jobs linked directly to Telstra’s consumer and small business NBN operations.

“The Telstra executive team are slashing jobs and asking those workers left behind to take a cut in their take-home pay, whilst forcing Australians to deal with an inferior service. At the same time, they’ve tried to give themselves massive bonuses.

“The way they’re running Telstra is completely at odds with what our communities expect and it is simply disgraceful.”

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