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28th Nov, 2007 - Telstra: Helstra in hot water over AWAs
Update 6th December: Telstra is currently under investigation by the Workplace Ombudsman over their alleged attempts to force staff to sign AWAs. If that weren't bad enough, Telstra has also been found guilty in court of deliberately deceiving and misleading customers about the coverage of its 3G mobile phone network.
Telstra has proven once again how sinister an organisation they are by attempting to force thousands of their staff to sign Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) which would effectively lock them into individual agreements with the company for up to 5 years, before the newly elected Labor government abolishes the IR laws in favour of their fresher approach.
It is clear from the landslide win to Labor on Saturday 24th November, that the in-coming government has a mandate to abolish these IR laws, and in particular AWAs.
Telstra's position on the workplace agreements is in stark contradiction to their view on the Liberal government. Suffice it to say that Telstra were clearly at odds with the Liberal government, and are happy to see the back of them - yet they are clinging onto Liberal IR policy - Why?
I'll tell you why.
Telstra is an insipidly evil organisation, rotten to the very core, and totally mis-managed by greedy corporate types who care nought for their staff as indicated by the related suicides of Telstra employees Sally Sandic and Leon Dousset. These two respresented the views of all Telstra staff who were forced onto performance agreements which became impossible to meet, i.e. They weren't happy with working for Telstra under their increasingly unfair system. Unfortunately in their situation this resulted in savage bouts of depression which ultimately led to their deaths (more on them in another article, it is coming soon and I promise that Telstra will not be spared). Now Telstra is attempting to lock more Telstra workers into these unfair, unrealistic, and unAustralian agreements.
It has been suggested that Labor will need an iron hand to keep Telstra in-line, and these latest revelations involving AWAs certainly indicate that to be the truth. Telstra doesn't want to be under the government's thumb and so are publicly crawling to try and ensure they don't end up there again, whilst privately carrying out their machiavellian schemes in order to shore up their precious monopolies in the marketplace.
Thankfully the Competitive Carriers Coalition, represented by non-dominant telcos iiNet, Primus, PowerTel, et al are urging Labor to instigate structural reform in Australia's telecommunications industry to kill Telstra's monopoly. I think we all want that, as it not only kills Telstra's monopoly on price fixing it will force them to actually compete on customer service and we as long-suffering consumers deserve these improvements sooner rather than later.
Let's shake the wool from our eyes and realise that it wasn't the Liberals holding back broadband, that is just a convenient scapegoat to allow Telstra to refuse to roll out broadband. It is Telstra holding back Australia's broadband, and the sooner they are brought into line the better.
This reform of the industry will also help to ensure that Labor fulfils one of its core promises - to build a word-class national broadband network for Australia.
I didn't vote Labor, but I sure as hell will be demanding that every promise they made comes to fruition.
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