Telstra work culture 17 June 2007 The Australian

17 JUNE 2007:

John Stapleton

A radical revamp of the the work culture at Telstra, which employs 40,000 people, could have contributed to the suicides of at least two people, according to an expose to run tonight on the ABC's Four Corners program.

The program tells of a transformed corporate ethic creating anger and distress amongst employees who are facing extreme pressure from management since the arrival of new chief the American executive Sol Trujillo.

Telstra is recorded as a workplace where union delegates are called ``dragons'', anyone with a negative attitude is a ``savage'' and under-performers are ``submarines''.

Sally Sandic. a young award winning call centre worker in Melbourne who  committed suicide in January this year following enormous pressure at work. Employees in her call centre had been told to double their sales of mobile phone contracts, and signed a petition complaining about their new targets.

Another Telstra suicide, Leon Dousset, a field technician for 32 years, was so depressed it is impossible to say what was the final trigger, but friends and family said he had been a proud worker who was deeply destressed and demoralised by changes to his work.

AWAs signed by new employees in Telstra call centres mean they can lose up to 30 per cent of their salary if they fail to meet company targets. New employees have no choice but to participate in the schemes.

The program quotes Sol Trujillo saying: ``All of us have to get in the game, all of us have to make things happen, and we can't let policies or individuals stand in the way.''

Trujillo boasts that Telstra has the largest number of AWAs of any company in Australia.

But the ABC record a litany of complaints from call centre employees who have entered a brave new world of ``performance improvement plans'', threatened with a loss of wages if they fail to create and exploit an emotional connection with customers in order to sell them phone, internet and pay TV products, when all they want is their phones fixed.

Their every key stroke is recorded and monitored, and their calls listened to without them knowing. Breaks are timed to the minute. A pregnant woman was forced to account for her visits to the toilet.

Telstra Chief Operating Officer Greg Winn is recorded telling a business meeting: ``We run an absolute dictatorship and that's what's going to drive this transformation and deliver results... If you can't get the people to go there and you try once and you try twice... then you just shoot 'em and get 'em out of the way.''