Telstra workers let down
November 3, 2008
Telstra’s workforce needs a strong industrial umpire with dispute settling powers to break the long-running stalemate over a new collective agreement, unions said today.
Despite overwhelming evidence of persistent breaches of good faith by the company’s senior management, under current WorkChoices laws the Australian Industrial Relations Commission is unable to order management back to the negotiating table.
It is very disappointing that Telstra management is persisting with a strategy of ignoring workers’ democratic rights to be represented by unions despite a non-union deal being rejected by the workers in September. Today, the two main unions representing Telstra’s 32,000-strong workforce will lodge applications in the AIRC to conduct a ballot of members to authorise protected industrial action at Telstra.
ACTU Secretary, Jeff Lawrence, said the prospect of industrial action could have been avoided if the independent umpire had powers to make binding orders to resolve disputes of this kind.
“Telstra’s employees have been let down by the system,” Mr Lawrence said.
“Management has repeatedly snubbed attempts to negotiate a new enterprise agreement. Workers feel they have no choice but to take industrial action in support of a decent agreement and to send a message to management to come back to the negotiating table.”
“The Industrial Relations Commission has found that Telstra has not acted in good faith, but it has no power to order the company to negotiate with unions. This is a clear cut example of why we need an independent umpire with teeth under Labor’s new IR system. Fair Work Australia must be able to make a binding determination as a last resort after serious and persistent breaches of good faith orders.”
Mr Lawrence said the ACTU would be putting the case to the Rudd Government that the independent umpire should be able to arbitrate in limited circumstances.
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2 Responses to “Telstra workers let down”
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I think Mr. Lawrence is right, Telstra employees have been let down by the system, but this includes unions. In a bid to continue bickering over who is right and who is wrong, Telstra and the unions are successfully bypassing employee interests. Ultimately, you’re playing games and you think it’s fun. I don’t think so.
I don’t think the unions are bypassing employee interests. After reading the last few posts on here it seems to me that it is Telstra that is ignoring employees’ desire to a collective agreement. They’ve tried to get a non-union agreement in place only to find its workforce rejecting these agreements in favour of collective agreement.
Telstra only seems to be interested in posting massive profits regardless of the cost to customer services or its workforce.