Telstra Workers' Strike Vote

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday January 21, 2008

Vanda Carson

TELSTRA'S phone and internet repair and installation workers in NSW will meet on Wednesday to decide whether to join their counterparts in other states in a strike and blockade of the company's Melbourne headquarters to protest over pay levels.

They could strike by the end of the month.

Telstra is battling on another front with the Federal Government over plans to switch off its regional mobile telephone network. Last week the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, postponed the closure of the Telstra network for at least three months.

The estimated 2500 subcontractors nationwide say their pay will fall if Telstra introduces new contracts with fees up to 20 per cent lower than at present.

Telstra hopes to save $140 million over an initial two-year contract with its contractors, who in turn employ the subcontractors. Telstra has given $2.5 billion of field-maintenance work to three companies: Service Stream, Leighton Holdings' subsidiary Vision Stream, and Silcar.

As subcontractors, the maintenance workers cannot fight the pay dispute under the Workplace Relations Act, and must approach the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for permission to bargain together and stop work. Without the permission, they could be charged with collusion or price fixing.

While they are not union members they are members of a contractors association established by the Communications Workers Union.

The union's president, Len Cooper, said yesterday that customers could experience delays if subcontractors go on strike or leave the industry because of the falling pay rates.

He said members in South Australia were due to meet tonight following meetings on Thursday in Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and Queensland which approved the action.

Mr Cooper said Telstra had been relying on the subcontractors for its maintenance work since laying off more than 50,000 workers in the past decade. He said the subcontractors had not received a raise since subcontracting began more than a decade ago.

The pending strike action echoes the action the subcontractors took in December 2003 and early the following year over pay rates for installing and fixing pay-television services for Foxtel, which is half-owned by Telstra.

That action prompted Foxtel to drop plans to cut pay rates, but the subcontractors have not been able to secure any rises since then.

A Telstra spokesman said the company was confident that customers would not be affected by the threatened strike action. He said the dispute was an issue for the contractors and not Telstra, but that Telstra was unaware of any employee issues between subcontractors and their contractors.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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