Staff ‘stunned’ by Telecom changes

Press, 6 May 1988, Page 4

Staff ‘stunned’ by Telecom changes

PA Wellington Telecom head office staff are “stunned” by restructuring plans announced on Wednesday which could affect 1500 jobs, says a union official. Mr Richard Davies, of the Post Office Union’s Wellington district office, said, “Morale in Telecom has been very low and this is not going to help.” Telecom’s managing director, Dr Peter Troughton, wrote to all staff on Wednesday about plans to divide the huge corporation into seven subsidiaries and other business units.

Head office staff, he said, would be reduced by 1000 in the first year. But Mr Davies said Telecom had lost 2000 staff through attrition over the past year. Even if some head office staff went to the regions or to other jobs, he saw an over-all reduction. “Some of these people have been with Telecom for twenty or thirty years,” he said. Restructuring would be covered by an existing deployment agreement with the union arid this stressed sensitive handling of staff. However, Mr Davies said this did not

always happen in practice. “He had just been informed of a case where one staff member had been given a day’s notice. The general secretary of the union, Mr Graham Needham, said people were the biggest victims of the change from Government department to corporatisation. The Government’s policies were failing miserably in providing jobs, he said. ' The union has three weeks to make submissions on the proposals before the Telecom Board makes final decisions in June.