Australian telecommunications and media company Telstra (ASX: TLS, NZX: TLS) is continuing with its plans to lay-off the 900 operational employees announced several weeks ago, according to a statement released today by the Communications Electrical Plumbing Union. These redundancies are separate from the recently announced intention to axe 300 senior and middle level managers.

The laying off of the 900 hundred frontline employees is a further attack on the customer service standards in Telstra and is contrary to the undertakings of chief David Thodey, said the union representing Telstra and other communications sector employees.

To illustrate, CEPU said many "blue chip" companies will experience longer delays in service restoration and other aspects of their communications systems service as a result of making critical, highly skilled technical staff redundant, in Telstra's data centres in Sydney and Melbourne.

"As a further example, as a result of the highly skilled technical staff in Telstra's Clayton Victoria, Global Operations Centre (GOC) being made redundant, Telstra has deliberately downgraded some of the 'alert systems' at the GOC so that customer service failures and difficulties will only be addressed 'in hours' and therefore customer service failures will not be corrected until the next day or until after the weekend."

More Telstra personnel in regional areas are being made redundant, reducing the capacity to respond to service failures and provision of new services and further reducing spending/buying power in the country areas, said the statement.

Figures from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman for 2009 indicated an overall 130 percent increase in complaint-handling issues and a 72 percent increase in complaints about customer service in telecommunications companies including Telstra. While the TIO subsequently reported a small drop in the complaints numbers for the first three months of 2010, the total number of complaints still exceeded 50,000 in the quarter.

Telstra has made an "in principle" agreement with NBN Co. and the Federal Government, to rollout a national fibre-to-the-home project, the biggest project since the Snowy River Scheme. The ink is not dry on the agreement and Telstra is shedding the very skilled labour that will be vital to the project and many of these skilled, trained workers will be lost to the industry, said CEPU.

Len Cooper, the Secretary of the Victorian T&S Branch and Divisional President of the CEPU (Communications Division) said, "This is a management that is devoid of any ideas of how to solve the company's current and future problems, other than relying on the "blunt weapon" of mass redundancies every year."

"The outcomes of these redundancies will further erode customer service in a company with an appalling record, and this is completely contrary to the CEO's commitments to the public, the shareholders and the regulators."