Telstra axe swings again

单衣纵酒

Andrew Colley | June 14, 2007

TELSTRA has taken a scythe to its headcount for the second time in less than two weeks and expanded its redundancy slip file to 744 jobs following an announcement late today.
Solly

Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo promised to cut 12,000 jobs by 2010
Telstra said that it would cut 244 jobs across its billing and backend operations in Brisbane, Melbourne and Ballarat. Eight days ago the carrier announced it would close 13 call centres around Australia with net job losses reaching 500.

John Rolland executive director Telstra's Customer Sales and Service division said the operation affected by the cuts would be scaled down over the coming months before closing in September.

"These people will manage (the divisions) out over a short period of time between now and September," Mr Rolland said.

Mr Rolland said the cuts would mainly affect parts of the business that were reliant on manual processing systems.

Telstra said that it would try to redeploy the workers in other parts of its business including its Bigpond internet division call centre operation.

"They've get very good computer skills and management of administrative tasks and they've been fantastic people for us. We're going to retrain as many as we can for other roles in the company," he said.

The cuts are part of carrier's five-year plan to reduce its headcount by 12,000 jobs announced November 2005.

Mr Rolland conceded that the carrier's employees would require assistance to cope with the psychological impact of the changes to the company over the life of the transformation project.

He said the carrier had a lot of support programs in place and that it was "rolling out new programs in the next few months to help (employees) deal with the rapid change".

The carrier's plans have drawn attention from both sides of the political fence. Late yesterday Communications Minister Senator Helen Coonan met with Telstra in bid to soften the impact of the cuts announced eight days ago.

A group of Tasmanian parliamentarians including federal member for Bass Michael Ferguson is planning to write to Telstra chief Sol Trujillo with a proposal to keep its Launceston call centre operation open.

freehand

be honest , it is more effective to downsize management team rather than to cut  call centre

guigua

outsourse?