Telecommunications
Unpaid overtime: Telstra coughs up
(19 March 2010) Some Telstra employees at the Burwood customer service centre in Victoria have recently received a pleasant surprise – payment for overtime worked years ago.
No formal explanation of the reason for the payment – or for delay in making it – has been offered by Telstra. But clearly it represents a response to the campaign initiated by the CEPU last September to address the company’s practice of squeezing unpaid work out of its call centre employees.
Last year, CEPU members at Burwood reported that employees regularly worked unpaid overtime after the end of their shifts to complete the handling of customer requests. The union took the issue to Fair Work Australia and sought access to Telstra’s employee records to establish the facts of the matter.
Now, without the case even having gone to court, it appears Telstra is in damage control mode. Payments for overtime worked four years ago have started to appear on employees’ payslips.
And this trickle threatens to become a flood. The union estimates that over the six years since these practices were introduced Telstra has underpaid its Burwood employees by millions of dollars.
With Telstra management silent on the issue, it is too soon to know how extensive this pay “readjustment” will be. Potentially, however, it could involve compensating a much larger number of employees than those who work at Burwood.
For more information, contact the CEPU via feedback@cepu.asn.au