9am: Today, the media revealed yet another set of slides created by Telstra Human Resources.

These slides show that Telstra plans to cut wages, and to outsource jobs to a labour hire firm.

Download new slides

A new enterprise agreement would maintain Telstra’s status as the best pay in the industry, but Telstra wants to cut its wages bill by 15%. These slides show that Telstra plans to cut wages, and to outsource jobs to a labour hire firm.

This slide reveals that due to collective bargaining and union involvement in negotiations Telstra’s average pay is currently the best in the industry, but the company wants to reduce the gap by offering only small annual increases (less than 4% a year). With inflation this year tipped to be above 4.5%, this amounts to a real pay cut. A new enterprise agreement would maintain Telstra’s status as the best pay in the industry.

Again, due to collective bargaining, Telstra’s call centre employees are above the industry average, although the gap is closing. But this isn’t good enough for the company - it appears it wants to outsource their jobs to Salesforce, who pay less than half the market average. There are currently 4739 people employed in the call centres.

Telstra’s field staff currently earn an average of almost $60,000 a year, compared to the market rate of about $50,000. But if Telstra can hold the line and not allow an enterprise agreement, that gap will have closed to only a couple of thousand dollars by 2011.