Telstra gives unions the silent treatment

Telstra's main union claims it has not heard a peep out of Telstra, despite continuing industrial action.

National president of the Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union Ed Husic said that there had as yet been no olive branch from Telstra. "Not a phone call, not an email, not an SMS, smoke signal, nothing."

Despite the lack of response from the corporation, he believed the action was going well, with 96 per cent of unionised workers carrying out the 48-hour stoppages. It is not compulsory for members to conduct action.

Husic said that one quarter of all ATMs across the country which developed faults in their telecommunications connections went unfixed. Harder faults were being added to the backlog of work, Husic said, because Telstra couldn't fix them.

"It's probably added a week to the fault repair schedule," he said. "That clearly isn't any good for Telstra."

A Telstra spokesperson said that the company would do everything necessary to maintain service levels to its customers, but pointed out that only 15 per cent of its employees were union members.

The spokesperson said that Telstra had put forward a fair offer which had roused the interest of over 5,000 employees.