Optus braces for potential job cuts, union says up to 90 to go
Australia’s second biggest telco is expected to axe 90 jobs, following 600 redundancies last year, as it reels from the fallout of last year’s national outage.
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Optus is bracing for a round of potential redundancies as its reels from last year’s national outage.
Communication Workers Union national assistant secretary James Perkins said up to 90 jobs were expected to go – on top of 600 Optus axed last year – branding the move a “disgrace”.
“That’s another 90 workers who are left without a job in a cost of living crisis where it’s already hard enough to put food on the table and a roof over your head. It’s one thing after another at Optus and it’s the workers and customers who are paying the price,” Mr Perkins said,
“The recent outage disaster is a clear example of what happens when you slash Australian jobs and continue to outsource critical roles. Optus should be investing in Australian jobs and its local network – not shaving it back.”
When asked about the quantum of the cuts, a spokeswoman for the telco said: “Optus continually evaluates our organisational structure to ensure it is the right one for meeting our customers’ needs.”
But the spokeswoman did not provide further detail, saying “changes are communicated to our employees in the first instance”.
“We have no update to provide at this time.”
Optus sacked 200 workers in the two months before the outage hit in early November, taking the tally to 600 last year.
Mr Perkins said at the time: “Slashing your workforce has a direct impact on quality of service.”
Before the pandemic, Optus employed more than 8000 people. That number has been cut to 7000, according to the telco’s latest sustainability report.
Optus’s parent Singtel spent $S18m ($20.42m) on staff restructuring costs last year. The highest profile departure was former chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, who quit the company after appearing at a bruising Senate inquiry into the outage. A permanent chief executive is yet to be appointed with chief financial officer Michael Venter acting in an interim capacity.
This has opened the field to a range of potential candidates, including former NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who now manages Optus’s business customers.
The network shutdown cut off more than 10 million Australians from phone and internet services for about 12 hours. Almost 2700 could not contact triple-0 for emergency services, prompting a Senate inquiry and ultimately chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin’s resignation.
In its December quarter accounts released last Friday, Singtel revealed the cost of the outage had hit $S54m. It also sent Optus’s revenue tumbling 5.4 per cent to $S1.8bn in the three months to December 31. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, meanwhile, eased 1.8 per cent to $S465m.
But Singtel chief executive Yuen Kuan Moon was confident the worst was behind its troubled Australian subsidiary.
“The Optus team has taken steps to increase network resilience since November’s outage. We are confident that our strong balance sheet and our priorities to improve the operational efficiencies of our core business and scale our growth engines will drive long-term value and returns,” he said.
Despite the fallout from the outage, Optus’s mobile revenue firmed 2.3 per cent to $1.43bn. It signed on an extra 228,000 customers, with its overall customer base growing 2.2 per cent to 10.5 million.
While Optus cut hundreds of jobs last year, it also made several hires, including former Optus business managing director Peter Kaliaropoulos, who was appointed to the new role of chief operating officer at the telco. Yuen described Mr Kaliaropoulos as a “veteran telecommunications executive”.
Since leaving Optus in 2005, Mr Kaliaropoulos has been chief executive of Singapore telco StarHub and has been consulting to businesses in the country since July last year.
The shutdown came 13 months after cyber criminals hacked into Optus’s database of almost 10 million customers and published a trove of personal and identity information, leaving customers exposed to a raft of financial crime.
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