Telstra Slashes More Local Jobs
The news came as a government agency on Tuesday released a study on how Australia is neglecting development of IT skills to its great detriment. (See story this page)
Telstra said the latest jobs to go, amounting to 15 percent of NAS workers, will probably be cut in October this year.
NAS head David Burns says that for IT infrastructure outsourcing, India offers the “biggest set of supplier capabilities – it’s a tried and tested market related to the areas we are looking at”. The relevant skills for these roles do exist in Australia, but Indian outsourcing partners offer a “greater scale” of those resources, he said.
The move comes as Telstra reviews its operations and proposes the introduction of overseas delivery centres to exploit its growth strategy.
It also comes hard on the heels of the imbroglio between Telstra and Federal Parliament over 650-odd jobs to be cut from the Sensis directory operation, 391 of them relocated to India and/or the Philippines. A parliamentary committee is due to report on that matter by July 19.
“Part of the NAS growth strategy is to expand into international markets, particularly the Asia-Pacific region. Discussions are currently under way regarding the establishment of delivery centres in conjunction with industry partners located in India,” a Telstra spokesman said.
“This proposal, if implemented, would involve outsourcing of non-customer-facing functions and services to industry partners, resulting in the reduction of around 170 existing roles (plus approx 90 contractors) in FY14 .
“If we proceed, transition would likely commence from October 2013 and we expect the transition would be complete by October 2014.”
Current Telstra NAS customers include Jetstar, Volvo, Fitness First and Defence. Burns says the latter will be served exclusively from Australia.
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