If Australians thought Mexican blow-in Sol Trujillo was over-rated, trashing our national telecommunications provider, Telstra; his replacement has just sold out thousands of Australian jobs to Filipinos.
Sol came, promised, under-delivered, then left.
He grabbed his $30 million taxpayer-funded payout, his two imported amigos, then he bagged Australia. As Telstra’s CEO, he promised that Telstra would generate $6 billion in revenue – but achieved $1 billion. During his watch he trashed Telstra’s share price down from $5 to $3. After Trujillo left Telstra and Australia, he bagged Australia as racist and backward.
Well it was ‘Adios Bandidos’!
Sol’s replacement, David Thodey, supposedly an Australian, now is on $5 million a year, give or take. Two weeks ago Thodey declared a $3.4 billion profit from Telstra. But its share price is hobbling along at just $3.80 odd and sorry, no dividend. Remember the big sell of Telstra’s public offering of T1, T2 and T3 to Australian mum and dad shareholders when Telstra was a strong $5?
If Sol sol(e)d Australian investors short, cost-cutting Thodey is head-long in sacking Australian workers. He’s got his KPMG offshoring consulting mates to replace Australians with cheap Third Worlders. BearingPoint Australia (formerly KPMG Consulting) has got itself a plumb niche showing large corporates how to replace Australians with contracting work in offshore locations or importing labour from low-cost countries.
Thodey installed his axeman, former Tabcorp executive Robert Nason, to slash and burn under the innocuous productivity project title ‘Project New’.
In the past 18 months Nason has offshored more than 2000 Telstra call centre and back-of-office jobs. Yesterday, Telstra announced that 650 Australia call centre jobs will go to ‘partners in Asia’ – aka Manila. (Ask a Filipino to pronounce the word affidavit). He is set to close Telstra’s Australian call centres in Lismore and Townsville. It will see 422 full-time staff sacked, including 126 from Townsville, 116 from Lismore and a combined 180 from Melbourne and Sydney, while another 229 staff employed through dependent agencies will also be cut from Telstra’s roster.
Telstra argues that it has had a 20% decline in customer service call volumes in the past 12 months with more customers going online. But if Telstra doesn’t need as many call centre staff, why is Telstra offshoring the labour?
A total of 3000 Australians are set to be sacked for foreign labour by the time Nason, Thodey and Bearing Point are done. How much commission will BearingPoint have extracted from selling out Australians for two-bit foreigners? How much productivity bonus will Thodey and Nason reap from selling out loyal Australian workers?
Where do they get these selfish bastards from?
Australia’s Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU) is on to it –
“Telstra are (sic) a bit like plague locusts when they have identified a new fertile area to feast on, off they go and the next thing you know it’s all devoured and gone,” said CEPU official Val Butler.
Offshoring is social betrayal