Telecom Alternative Annual Report now available
From the Council of Trade Unions. I will update the post when a weblink to the PDF document becomes available. Given Telecom released their annual report this week, the following should also be of interest to investors.
---
Telecom Alternative Annual Report 2009
Performance highlights:
- OECD leader! – Top 5 highest prices, but amongst lowest reinvestment in infrastructure.
- Terminator! – Commerce Commission says Telecom’s termination charges are twice as high as they should be.
- Walk the talk! – Dragging its feet over opening up the network to competition.
- Top gear! – New mobile network interfered with rival’s signals before launch because of lack of filters.
- Roger that! – Perennial nominee in Roger Award for Worst Transnational Corporation – Winner 2004 and 2007!
- Roaming! – Call centres offshored.
Employee relations:
- Chorus of disapproval – Telecom lines division Chorus hangs engineers out to dry.
- Vision problem – Telecom turning blind eye to Visionstream’s ugly dependent contractor model.
- BYO – If you want a job, bring your own van and equipment – decent income not included.
- Our most important asset – You’d think Telecom would have more concern for skills shortage workers essential to its business, not allow its contractor to drive down their earnings, put them at risk of bankruptcy, and maybe lose them from the industry altogether.
- Own goal – It’s Telecom’s cables that won’t get fixed if engineers have to cut corners to try and squeeze a living out of the job. Guess who else loses? That’s right – you, the customer.
Labels: corporations, Telecom, unions
posted by Joe Hendren @ 07:18
1 comments
1 Comments:
When you use the phrase "labor shortage" or "skills shortage" you're speaking in a sentence fragment. What you actually mean to say is: "There is a labor shortage at the salary level I'm willing to pay." That statement is the correct phrase; the complete sentence and the intellectually honest statement.
Don't speak about shortages as though they represent some absolute, readily identifiable lack of desirable services. Price is rarely accorded its proper importance in this sort of "worker/skill shortage" rhetoric.
If you start raising your wages and improving working conditions, and continue to do so, you'll solve your “shortage” and will shortly have people lining up around the block to work for you even if you need to have huge piles of steaming manure hand-scooped on a blazing summer afternoon.
Re: Shortage due to retirees: With the majority of retirement accounts down about 50% or more, people entering retirement age are being forced to work well into their sunset years. So, you won’t be getting a worker shortage anytime soon due to retirees exiting the workforce.
Okay, fine. Some specialized jobs require training and/or certification, again, the solution is to raise your wages and improve benefits. People will self-fund their re-education so that they can enter the industry in a work-ready state. The attractive wages, working conditions and career prospects of technology during the 1980’s and 1990’s was a prime example of people’s willingness to self-fund their own career re-education.
Post a Comment
<< Home