Telstra to cut up to 24 jobs from wholesale business

Telstra could cut up to 24 jobs from its wholesale customer operations team.

A Telstra spokesperson told CRN the decision came after a review of the customer operations team to "optimise team structure and identify process efficiencies" to provide better customer service to wholesale customers.

"These changes take into account the accelerating pace of change of the NBN rollout and the decline of PSTN, DSL and other associated fixed line transactions for our wholesale customers," the spokesperson said.

Telstra met with the Communication Workers Union about the cuts, which said they were in response to a "decline in transactions over its fixed network" and that staff affected are based in Sydney and Brisbane.

The union said the trend was likely to continue as fixed line services migrated to the NBN.

"However, the losses also reflect Telstra’s decision to deal with the increased variability of customer demands in the NBN environment by transferring certain Wholesale work to an 'industry partner'," the union wrote on its website.

The CWU said it met with Telstra, which confirmed it would seek voluntary redundancies for the positions, as well as actively look to redeploy those staff into other parts of the company.

"Members should be aware that employees facing redundancy as a result of the NBN project should be candidates for retraining under Telstra’s current NBN agreement with the Commonwealth," the CWU said. "Any members wishing to undertake such training and encountering difficulties should contact their state branch."

Last month, Telstra revealed plans to cut 55 jobs from its enterprise services team in the design function, a move which the CWU formally opposed.