Can you trust Telstra’s advice?
January 28, 2009
As the non-union ECAs drag on, more stories emerge of the truth being thrown overboard.
In the latest development, Human Resources has been forced to intervene after team leaders allegedly circulated false and misleading statements about the company redundancy agreement.
The story begins at a staff briefing in Telstra Business in Brisbane, where team leaders claimed that if workers did not vote for the current ECA offer, the Telstra Redundancy Agreement (TRA) would cease to operate on 31 March.
This would mean that redundancy entitlements would revert to a maximum 16 weeks redundancy pay, compared to up to 80 weeks, a $4500 job search payment, and other entitlements under the TRA.
As soon as your unions heard about this, they wrote to Telstra Human Resources to point out that non only was this untrue (the law prevents workers from losing current entitlements if they do not vote for a new agreement), but it could constitute illegal coercion to get employees to approve the ECA.
The reply from Human Resources confirms that the information given to the Brisbane staff meeting was incorrect, and Telstra would do its best to ensure any false and misleading statements about the TRA would cease and not recur.
Unfortunately, this latest incident is part of a pattern of misleading information being given to staff during ECA offers. Team leaders are not industrial relations experts, so it’s not surprising they make mistakes. They are also under huge pressure from above to get ECA votes through before workplace laws change (not to mention the bonuses they stand to be paid).
So before you make a decision about your future, make sure you get all the facts from your union.
We ARE industrial experts . . . and we’re on your side.
If you are offered an ECA, contact your union immediately, or call us on 1300 362 223.
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2 Responses to “Can you trust Telstra’s advice?”
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I work for telstra and the amount of misleading information passed on to us is staggering. Every piece of information we are given we have to check thoroughly as there is no trust for tesltra here. I can’t recall 1 situation where telstra have given us the whole story or 100% correct info.
They are a disgrace to Australia and I’m embaressed to say they are an Australian company and embarressed to say i work for them.
We were told by Telstra HR that there was no requirement for an ECA to be a secret ballot. I’d like to know if that is true. Currently Telstra has details of how we voted, not to mention records of how we said we would vote if an ECA was offered to our group. We were required to tell management how we would vote. I think the intent was to make sure that they only offered an ECA to people they knew would vote yes, to avoid getting egg on their faces. As it turned out, there is plenty of egg.