Telstra workers resist forced transfers
By Bill Mason
BRISBANE — One hundred and fifty Telstra workers attended a protest meeting on January 30 after the company announced a plan to centralise its faults-recording network in Melbourne, forcing some 540 workers nationally to relocate or lose their jobs.
The Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU) has begun lobbying state premiers and is planning an advertising campaign against the plan.
Queensland CEPU telecommunications branch secretary Ian McLean warned on January 27 that the 180 Queensland Telstra workers forced to move or lose their jobs would not shy away from industrial action after their current industrial agreement ended on March 24. Many of them had just re-established their families in Brisbane after relocating from regional areas of Queensland only three years ago.
McLean said the changes would result in reduced services to the 50% of Queensland's Telstra customers living outside Brisbane.
Telstra claims that moving its network operations to Melbourne would save $150 million over three years. CEPU national president Col Cooper said that it would cost the company money for training a new work force. If Telstra persisted with its plan, it faced "significant conflict unlike any seen since the mid-1970s", Cooper warned.