Telstra restarts job cuts with 1400 staff axed

Lucas BairdReporter

Feb 3, 2021 – 4.39pm

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Telstra has restarted job cuts after a year-long hiatus induced by the coronavirus pandemic, telling 1425 staff that their time with the telecommunications giant will soon come to an end.

Chief executive Andy Penn broke the news of the job cuts to staff on Wednesday morning through a company-wide email. Dominic Lorrimer

This new round of cuts – the first since chief executive Andy Penn said the company would “play our part” in the crisis by pausing the reductions last March – was announced to staff via a company-wide email on Wednesday.

Affected workers were in talks with management officials by the afternoon.

It comes as Telstra nears the end of the T22 restructure first started in mid-2018. The initiative aimed to strip $1 billion of costs out of the company, primarily through cutting jobs and splitting off old infrastructure assets, and Mr Penn said 2021 was an “inflection point” for the strategy at an event last week.

The workforce reduction part of the plan is nearly complete – including the latest round, the company will have sacked 90 per cent of the 8000 workers flagged for an exit by June 30, 2021, when the program was announce

Telstra expects to cut 800 more jobs before the end of the calendar year.

Telstra would not say which areas of the business those leaving came from or how many from each of its segments would depart.

It will have a staff of about 24,000 people when the T22 role reductions are finished.