Telstra to cut jobs, send work offshore in wholesale business changes

Telstra is set to eliminate 135 local roles across its wholesale business, with the telco's finance, billing and software engineering workforce facing cuts or offshoring.

The company has engaged with its staff and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), and revealed it would be making a number of roles redundant, as well as creating 38 new positions, resulting in a total of 97 positions no longer required at the telco.

In a website post addressed to its members, the CPSU said that all back-of-house wholesale billing functions, all back-of-house wholesale order provisioning and delivery functions, and a number of transactional wholesale facilities access functions would be offshored. 

The CPSU also said it had been notified of changes occurring in Telstra Operations, specifically Telstra's software engineering department, where 20 existing positions would become redundant and 25 new roles created. 

Affected positions are located in Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide and Melbourne, according to the CPSU, which is slated to meet with Telstra on Monday to discuss the changes.  

A Telstra spokesperson said the wholesale business was in the process of consultation around its proposed changes.

"If the proposed changes go ahead, there will be some roles impacted and we are working with our teams to ensure they have the support they need during this period. Decisions that impact our employees are not taken lightly," the spokesperson said.

"As our wholesale business responds to increasing competition and prepares for a post NBN environment, these are the difficult decisions we need to make to evolve and support our new growth areas. 

"We are working with those impacted to help them look for appointment opportunities within and outside of Telstra. We do not expect the proposed changes to have any disruption to customers."   

Update 19 March, 2018: Telstra has advised the number of jobs impacted was actually 135, rather than the 92 the company originally stated.