The Deregulation of the Australian Telecommunications Sector: Business Strategies and Employment Relations at Telstra in a Changing Competitive Environment

Abstract

Using interview data collected between 1996 and 2010, the author explores how deregulation of the Australian telecommunications sector and re-regulation of the labor market affected employment relations strategies at Telstra, Australia's former telecommunications monopoly. Employment Relations Strategies in Telstra included large-scale downsizing and outsourcing. It moved dramatically toward anti-union employment relations approaches, with a shift away form collective bargaining toward individual employment contract. Besides management ideology, this paper focuses on unions' action in Telstra's privatization because in the changing competitive environments the merely chance the unions have to prove their utility to workers seems to be their ability to ensure job security.