2018-06-20
Wednesday, 20th June 2018
After a week of national service outages, Telstra have announced they will be cutting a quarter of their Australian workforce in a bid to improve customer service, a move labelled by the Greens as “nonsense”.
Australian Greens Telecommunications spokesperson Senator Jordon Steele-John said today’s announcement from Telstra was the inevitable result of the company’s privatisation over the last two decades.
“This is what happens when a company’s priorities shift from service and service delivery, to profits at any cost,” Senator Steele-John said.
“This is an utterly disingenuous announcement from Mr Penn; you can’t cut 8,000 jobs and simultaneously expect the Australian people to believe you will improve customer service.
“Just this week Telstra customers have seen significant service outages across the country and not for the first time this year either. Trust in the Telco has hit rock bottom.
“Time and again the Coalition talk about privatising public assets and giving tax cuts to big companies and time and again the companies themselves turn out to be the only winners.
“Privatisation means workers jobs will be the first thing to go when profits are threatened, and that is exactly what we’ve seen today from Telstra!
“If you think NBN customer service is bad now, just wait until the Government send it down the same path of privatisation as Telstra. The Australian Greens will continue to fight to stop the same thing happening to the NBN; essential public services must stay in public hands for the public good.”
Media contact:
Tim Oliver – 0448 316 387