Telstra plans to cut 133 positions across its wholesale team but says it will also create 38 new roles.
“Telstra Wholesale has commenced consultation with our staff on a proposal to change the way we resource our billing and some of our back-end business processes,” a spokesperson for the company said.
“If the proposed changes go ahead, there will be some roles impacted and we are working with our teams to ensure they have the support they need during this period. Decisions that impact our employees are not taken lightly.”
The Community and Public Sector Union said that Telstra plans to offshore all of its back-of-house wholesale billing as well as back-of-house wholesale order provisioning and delivery functions. According to the CPSU, the company plans to offshore a number of transactional wholesale facilities access functions.
“As our wholesale business responds to increasing competition and prepares for a post NBN environment, these are the difficult decisions we need to make to evolve and support our new growth areas,” the Telstra spokesperson said.
“We are working with those impacted to help them look for appointment opportunities within and outside of Telstra. We do not expect the proposed changes to have any disruption to customers.”
The union said that Telstra had also proposed making 20 positions in its software engineering team redundant but would create 25 new positions.
The affected positions are spread between Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney, the union said.
The CPSU said it would meet with Telstra early next week to discuss the proposals.
Earlier this week Telstra confirmed to Computerworld that its chief information officer, John Romano, had departed decades at the telco.
“We will commence the search for a permanent replacement. Chief Technology Officer Hakan Eriksson, an accomplished leader during his time with Ericsson including as CEO Australia and New Zealand, will act as CIO in addition to his responsibilities,” a spokesperson told Computerworld.
Updated at 3.05pm to correct the number of redundancies planned and add comment from Telstra.
Updated: March 19 to correct the number of redundancies planned.