Union ramps up bans on Telstra

Telstra union members launched a second wave of industrial action on the weekend to push their case for an improved enterprise agreement while pressing the telco on its moves to shift to non-union agreements.

The campaign, through the Communication Electrical and Plumbing Union, banned weekend emergency duties and overtime and this week will broaden to legally protected 24-hour, 48-hour and indefinite stoppages in key divisions.

This second phase follows pre-Christmas action by CEPU members and is the most significant union move yet in what is shaping as a particularly fraught year on the industrial relations front as some 5000 EBAs across retail, banking and mining, along with car component manufacturing, expire as the economy deteriorates.

Telstra has run a hard line on union-mediated award negotiations but faces the task of replacing expiring Australian Workplace Agreements.

CEPU communications national president Len Cooper said the action was national and company-wide.

"With the pre-Christmas action, Telstra is behind in a number of projects and has a huge backlog of calls which they would have been trying to catch up with overtime and call-outs [of our members]," he said. "There ’s been no formal response from [Telstra] but the rhetoric seems to have changed a little to we ’ve always been open to discussion ’." The pre-Christmas action led to a week-long backlog and affected mainly payments systems such as Eftpos and ATMs, although prepaid internet was also affected.

Mr Cooper said Telstra had a "part A and part B" offer, the first being offered to current members and the second targeted at staff coming off AWAs or new to the company. "We know a lot of our members have been approached with these offers Telstra ’s been working on this for about 12 months. It ’s not dissimilar to strategies we ’ve seen tried elsewhere, at Fairfax, Rio Tinto, BHP," Mr Cooper said.

Telstra spokesman Martin Barr reiterated the company ’s commitment to maintaining service levels to customers during industrial action, without commenting specifically on the latest wave of the campaign.

"It should be remembered that union membership at Telstra is only 15 per cent of our employee base and, on average, only about 5 per cent of Telstra ’s call centre consultants are eligible to take action, ’~ he said. Most Telstra employees will be at work serving our customers.

We continue to talk to our employees directly and over 5000 eligible employees have registered their interest in an employee collective agreement." Mr Barr said Telstra had put forward a "fair and competitive offer which protects all current terms and conditions of enterprise agreement employees ’S. The offer guarantees 12.5 per cent pay rises over three years plus up to 7.5 per cent in performance-based bonuses.

"Telstra s employee collective agreement easily exceeds national average increases of 3.9 per cent per year and Telstra is already recognised as offering the best pay and conditions in the industry," he said.

Telstra broke off union negotiations in mid-2008 to pursue nonunion collective agreements.

Andrew Cornell
Australian Financial Reviews