Where to now for long term investors of Telstra, page-10777

Chief executive Andy Penn outlined the job cuts in an email to Telstra staff yesterday, saying the cuts would have taken place last year had the pandemic not hit. Even so major Australian businesses are expected to face political heat for widespread job cuts while the economy is in a recovery phase.
“As you all know, last year we put our T22 job reductions on hold when COVID hit,” Mr Penn told staff in the memo obtained by The Australian. “We did this to give you as much certainty as we could during a very challenging time.
“We also said we would have to move ahead on these early this year as we continue to transform the company and complete our T22 journey. Today we are proposing up to 1,425 net role reductions.
“Adding today’s proposals we expect to be more than 90 per cent through our T22 commitment to reduce our overall workforce by 8,000 net roles by 30 June 2021 and have completed or nearly finished by the end of this calendar year.”
It is understood Telstra is expecting to make another 800 reductions mostly by the end of this calendar year. While the telco is cutting some roles it is recruiting for others.
Mr Penn also foreshadowed possible further cuts beyond the T22 plan. “We will need to continue making organisational changes, which will likely include role reductions beyond T22 as our business changes – just as we did before T22,” he said.
The CEPU Communications Union representing Telstra employees said customers would bear the brunt of the cuts. Union national president Shane Murphy last night urged Telstra to reconsider the cuts which he said included roles in rural and regional areas.
“While Telstra continues to cut staff, it‘s the workers and customers who are bearing the brunt of it,” he told The Australian.
“A job cut of this scale will hamper the ability for the Telstra workforce to get the job done, hastening the deterioration of the network and contributing to longer waits and increased outages for customers.”
Mr Penn in his email said Telstra would proceed with closing its contact centre in Cebu in the Philippines, announced in October last year as part of its plan to answer inbound calls from consumer and small business customers in Australia by the end of T22.
“I want to thank our team in Cebu for your passion and the way you have consistently shown up for our customers and lived our values. You will be missed and I wish you well for what comes next.”
Mr Penn said that by the end of 2021, Telstra expected to “align” all of its staff across four main employment groups.
Telstra announced it was slashing 8,000 staff in mid-2018. It targeted $1bn in cost cutting to be completed by the 2022 financial year.
It has also announced a split of its business into three entities to be called Telstra Group – InfraCo Fixed will own physical infrastructure assets, InfraCo Towers will own tower assets and ServeCo will focus on service delivery.

www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/telstra-job-carnage-continues/news-story/1478b9769455ef733e26e6cb8e722da0