Telstra's long-running strike has resulted in the phones in one of mining company Xstrata's offices going down for two days, the telco's main union claimed this week.
Telstra's long-running strike has resulted in the phones in one of mining company Xstrata's offices going down for two days, the telco's main union claimed this week.
According to the
Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union, phones were down in Xstrata's
Mackay office last Thursday and Friday
after striking workers refused to fix them. The phones stayed down
until a strike breaker was flown in to fix the problem for Friday
night, the union said.
Telstra management will be forced to negotiate, and they know that
better than anybody, despite the nonsense management has been going
on with.
CEPU spokesperson
The union also maintained that the problem had caused Telstra chief
executive Sol Trujillo to become remotely involved.
A media spokesperson for Xstrata had not commented on the issue at the time of publication, while Telstra would not comment specifically on the issue, repeating its line that the strike had resulted in almost zero impact for
customers.
"The vast majority of employees have decided to remain on the
job serving our customers and industrial action to date has had almost zero customer impact," the Telstra spokesperson said.
"We are prepared and we will do all we need to do to maintain levels of service to our customers."
The Xstrata outage has not been the only consequence of the strike, which has
been going on
since December last year, with multiple groups of
workers walking off the job for prolonged periods of time, the
union said.
The union reported its members as saying "All fault queues are
exploding and the huge delays in activation orders are so big, the
management are taking desperate steps to try and cover up the
impact."
Including other action, the union has said that Telstra
employees working on the PSTN network in Victoria walked out for
over a week over Easter. All Tasmanian, South Australian and
Northern Territory members have walked out for a day. Queensland
employees working in service delivery and transmission stopped work
for five days. The global operations centre workers are considering
more strikes. Overtime and recall bans have been in place almost
every weekend since the strike began.
The union reminded members that it could take legal protected
industrial action in the form of a 24-hour strike or a four-hour
strike on any day.
"This can be very effective action in some situations where
cut-overs are planned, where there are important planned events,
where there are urgent jobs required by management or where
management required targets are to be met," the union said.
"Telstra management will be forced to negotiate, and they know that
better than anybody, despite the nonsense management has been going
on with."