Telstra sacks 326 staff

Telstra has confirmed it is cutting 326 employees from its customer services division.

A Telstra spokesperson said that call centre jobs in Melbourne and Perth would suffer the most cuts, and that some jobs would be moved to Telstra's existing call centre in the Philippines.

He added that the main reason for the redundancies was due to customer support demand moving online, with the telco now delivering more than 50 percent of its support services over the web.

"We take our responsibility to support employees through this period very seriously and we absolutely understand the impact announcements like this can have on our staff," he said.

"We constantly review the way we work to simplify our business and remove duplication to improve customer experience."

The Community and Public Sector Union originally claimed that 450 jobs would go. The union, in a strongly worded statement, called for a petition to convince Telstra not to send jobs offshore.

“Customers pay top dollar for Telstra services and as taxpayers we’re giving millions of dollars to Telstra to roll out the NBN, yet the company continues to undermine the quality and reliability of its services by callously sacking Australian workers,” said CPSU director Teresa Davison.

“Telstra hides behind corporate clichés by claiming offshore call centres will deliver better customer service. That’s simply not most people’s experience. Time and again, customers say they want local customer service.”

Telstra has already seen a number of management-level departures this year, including director of business and enterprise partners Keith Masterton, chief technology officer Vish Nandlall, director of security practice Craig Joyce, wholesale group executive Stuart Lee and chairperson Catherine Livingstone.