Alice M.
Last month, Telstra moved to sack 700 workers
from its fully owned subsidiary, the directory service Sensis, which produces
and markets the White Pages and Yellow Pages digitally and in printed hard copy.
Nearly 400 jobs such as call centre staff, on
line graphic artists, web designers, online editors, advertising and production
employees, who are based mainly in Melbourne and Sydney, will be shipped off to
low paid labour in the Philippines or India.
The sackings come just a few months after
Telstra announced a half-year profit of A$1.6 billion.
It continues the pattern of corporations
shifting white collar jobs to low wage countries and dumping local workers on
the scrap-heap. The latest one is insurance company QBE, which intends to wipe
out 700 local jobs and send the work to the Philippines.
These recent sackings and offshoring of Sensis
and QBE workers’ jobs adds to the increasing disappearance of many skilled,
technological and computer jobs in Australia.
It further erodes the industrial, manufacturing, production and the technological
skills base in Australia, taking Australia closer to a banana “republic”.
Telstra, in particular, has a close
relationship with the government and is first in line for government contracts
and subsidies. Paul Bastion, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national
secretary echoed the growing public disgust when he said “If you’re an
Australia company, or a company here in Australia employing Australian citizens,
and you want to offshore jobs then you should get nothing from the public
purse.”
He said all government subsidies and funding
to Sensis, that made $685 million in profit last year, should be withdrawn. He
asked, “Should Telstra get public money and government contracts if they
off-shore jobs?”
Patriotic Australians from all walks of life
would say, “Hell, no!”
But, the Industry Minister’s office pointed
out that barring companies from government contracts would breach the Free
Trade Agreement – presumably the one with the USA.
Industry Minister Greg Combet, a former
leader of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, not surprisingly, was
unavailable for comment.
Not so shy were the 350 Sensis workers and
their supporters who staged an angry and noisy protest outside of Telstra
offices in the centre of Melbourne. The protest rally, organised by the AMWU
(Printing Division), Sensis union members and their shop floor delegates, demanded
Telstra reverses the sackings and keeps the jobs in Australia.
Three hundred and ninety Yellow Pages paper planes
were placed in the Telstra Head Office’s foyer, signifying each job Telstra is
sending overseas.
Sensis workers, their union and supporters in
the wider union movement and the community pledged to continue and widen the
national campaign to stop the sackings and offshoring of jobs, and build more secure,
skilled jobs in Australia.
The fight to stop the Sensis sackings and
keep jobs in Australia is a part of the developing movement for Australia’s
independence where the working people can start taking control of the economy
and run key industries in the national interests of all the people, not just
the wealthy few.
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