Telstra must provide certainty to Tasmanian employees

Telstra’s announcement that it intends to sack 8000 employees is a body blow to Australian telecommunications.

The company must make it clear immediately how many Tasmanian employees and contractors will be affected by the announcement.

“There will be many Tasmanians working for Telstra who will be shaken by this announcement, and wondering whether they are in the firing line,” said Brian Mitchell, the federal Labor MP for Lyons.

“Telstra must provide certainty, so that affected workers and their families can prepare for the future.

With the rollout of the NBN continuing to be plagued by congestion and connection problems and this week’s World Cup streaming failure by Optus, the job losses at Telstra point to deep-seated problems in Australia’s telecommunications sector under the Turnbull government.

“Telecommunications is meant to be one of the great growth industries in Australia – the last thing anyone would have expected would have been this haemorrhaging of so many jobs in this sector,” said Mr Mitchell, the Deputy Chair of the federal parliament’s Joint Standing Committee into the NBN.

“Just yesterday the Prime Minister was lecturing 60 year old aged care workers that they should aspire to get a better job.

“Now we have 8000 Australian Telstra workers who’ve been told they won’t even be able to keep the job they have. This is a tragedy for those families and shows there is something going wrong with Australia’s telecommunications sector.”
BRIAN MITCHELL MP FEDERAL LABOR MEMBER FOR LYONS