# Four Corners, Telstra & Americanisation



## Uncle Festivus (19 June 2007)

_http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2007/s1952054.htm

"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 them out of the way… "_ - Telstra Chief Operations Officer Greg Winn (at a May business meeting)

Such is the attitude of the featured doodle heads on Four Corners last night masquerading as Telstra senior management these days. What was more disturbing was the growing entrenchment of American style management philosophies into Australian business management.

Is it a sign of the times whereby senior managers are so short term focused on the bottom line at the expense of their human assets; senior management bonuses & performance targets being met through unrealistic employee benchmarks?

Australian Workplace Agreements (Workchoices?) featured prominently. 
John Howard has belatedly realised that Australians don't want to be Americans, but it may already be too late to save himself this time.


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## theasxgorilla (19 June 2007)

Yes the Australians with p@#s weak broadband and exhorbitant prices (practically the entire country) dont want to be Americans.


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## ROE (19 June 2007)

Blood money I said.

If you make profit from expense of a human life or making their family suffers or endure hardship at work. Unspeakable
I wouldn't touch TLS now even if it sell for 2 bucks knowing what they do for a profit.


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## Uncle Festivus (19 June 2007)

Telstra is now on my unethical stocks list. Now the gov has sold it watch it dump on it big time.


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## Sean K (19 June 2007)

Hey, stop downramping my beloved TLS!!!!  LOL

I probably should sell myself, but they're mostly my wife's from when she worked there!


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## KIWIKARLOS (19 June 2007)

I can't believe they aren't been sued for bullying and emotional damages.

Surely labeling staff as dragons and barbarians is against every comanies equity and respect training. 

Harassment is when one person makes another uncomfortable etc when they know that that person doesn't like it. 

I signed up with telstra for internet, the service sucks the internet is always down or dropping out and everytime you call for tech help its a 30+ min wait.
I've complained so many times i ended up getting 5 months free.


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## KIWIKARLOS (19 June 2007)

PS had to throw in another crappy company. E TRADE

Last week they had a clitch which ended up in their computers putting a hold on every cent in my bank account for two days. I couldn't touch my money. After talking with managers for an hour all i got was one free trade 

Who's better at a similar cost please


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## theasxgorilla (19 June 2007)

KIWIKARLOS said:


> Who's better at a similar cost please




I use National Online (NAB) as it backends directly into my St George margin loan...and at the time that I set it up nobody could match it for what I was after.  That was quite a few years ago now...and as I have a couple of CFD providers I'm seriously considering the benefits of consolidating everything into the Macquarie Prime offering...www.macquarie.com.au/prime

There is a thread running for it over here!  Join in and let us know what you think.


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## wayneL (19 June 2007)

Uncle Festivus said:


> John Howard has belatedly realised that Australians don't want to be Americans, but it may already be too late to save himself this time.


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## Col Lector (19 June 2007)

This is what gets to me
1. The Howard Govt's original argument for privatising Telstra was to ensure that Telstra had the capital required to implement expansion to meet the future needs of Australia ie, it was capital starved
2. At the same time they were milking it for billions of dollars each year (basically to feed their electoral slush-fund). And Nuclear-Ziggy was pissing the rest up the wall in Hong-Kong & suburbs (I recall that $10 billion went there... )
3. Before handing control of OUR-Telstra to a couple of loathsome American red-necks who couldnt careless if anyone was connected as long as they got their bonuses ( & probably TLS for their mates down the track for a song!?!).... 
4.Now Howard & Co are saying...just be thankful...if we didnt manage things so well then we wouldnt have had that $1 bill to ensure you might be able to log-on in a couple of years time.....assuming of course there are no complications...like hills, or trees...or valleys..or power-outages...

And these guys promote their credentials as managers!....And....people believe it!!


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## Col Lector (19 June 2007)

Just recently I finally snared a prime site on the NSW North Coast...between Lismore and Byron..that would allow me to expand my business....hard to come by in one of the fastest growing areas of Oz. All the preliminaries going well...until I checked the internet availability...Dialup ultraslow or Telstra Wireless 512/2GB at $199/m with bodgy reception almost guaranteed. All other options blocked by Telstra's stranglehold over the exchanges.
I'm in Sydney now...tied to my optus cable


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## macca (19 June 2007)

Hi Col,

A friend of mine uses this company, may be worth an email

http://www.bordernet.com.au/aus_vsat.htm

they do satellite broadband with gov't subsidy for installation.

HTH


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## Col Lector (19 June 2007)

Thanks Macca...I guess it has to be that or wait another couple of years. 
I actually think that Oz missed a huge opportunity (when the mobile analogue/digital/CDMA debate was on) to go fully satellite. At that time a Motorola-led consortium with 50+ sats in orbit was calling for other parties to join it and to grow the technology. 
This would have meant that the huge money spent on towers etc etc to achieve unreliable 10% coverage could have been channelled to achieve real full National cover....ie, whether you were 200km out to sea or sitting in the middle of the Simpson Desert. It would have functioned as an integrated safety network/phone & internet& TV etc. 
Instead of embracing this visionary goal for all Australians, they  (The H.Govt) chose instead the strategy of Telstra the cash-cow..ie, placate the rebelling non-GSM rural with the compromise of CDMA and preserve Telstra in a form that would allow it to be flogged to fill its election slush-fund. And here we are...
I refuse out of principle these days to even use a Telstra pay phone....if you could find one!!


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## arminius (21 June 2007)

gday,
the management of telstra simply reflect the wider ideology of our government. profit at all costs. bad luck if you get in the way. 
imho however we (as a nation) simply deserve every inconvenience, hardship, and anguish.

we had our chance last election. luckily we get another chance soon.


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## ekman (21 June 2007)

I guess there are bad apples on both sides of the fence (corporate and unions). My friend who works for Telstra in the higher ranks says he has noticed very drastic changes towards american way of doing things after Sol and his amigos took over. Their way is ruthless and bottom line at all costs attitude
IMO in terms of future strategy it seems that Telstra is pushing the monopoly card on FTTN and not looking into VOIP and other technologies


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## theasxgorilla (22 June 2007)

You probably don't want to hear about the 24mbps ADSL2+ I'm getting here in Sweden right now...or the 26 channels of digital TV over IP that is delivered OVER the ADSL2+ (thats right, digital friggin' TV over copper pair!) AND video-on-demand...costs about $65 a month, all inclusive with a modem, wireless AP/4 port switch and a digital box thrown in...(I forgot to meantion I can surf the web and check mail thru the same service).

I even had Telia (Telstra equiv.) come out and rewire the building free of charge when they activated the ADSL2+ it fried the copper...I'm 100 metres from the exchange...too much power or something!?!?

What gets me is that Sweden have the exact same issue...incumbent telco (Telia-Sonera) previously entirely government owned, doesn't want to provide wholesale access to national broadband backbone that they built...but the high court just stepped in and made a ruling that they have to...thats that.

Somebody(bodies) have f%#ked up the Telstra situation royaly.  In a way, I actually think Rudd is on the right track with regards to taking money from the future fund to build the network...redistribute some wealth from the oldies to the youngens...who will benefit from all that bandwidth anyhow?  the baby boomers??? yeah right...don't they have enough money already with their houses and investment properties and now their super annuation all bubbled up like it is???

Rant over.


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## Santob (22 June 2007)

The share market is the bastion of a free market, and the Americans are the biggest proponents of a free market (well they espouse it better than they act upon it).

Does anyone else sense the irony of a stock market forum complaining about the Actions of directors, that would no doubt be applauded if it improved the share price?


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## visual (22 June 2007)

So much whining and whinging about Telstra and the way it does business,maybe thats what it took,treating people like workers after decades of them treating the company like it was their own personal fiefdom.As a tax payers it used to annoy me immensely to hear of people constantly talking about the tools that they had stolen from Telecom as it was known then,or when the company threathen a crack down to hear of people asked to look after all the stolen tools that the police might find in their garage.The reason telstra employees are finding it hard now is because they`ve had it way too easy in the past.Good on the Americans for cracking down.


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## RichKid (22 June 2007)

visual said:


> So much whining and whinging about Telstra and the way it does business,maybe thats what it took,treating people like workers after decades of them treating the company like it was their own personal fiefdom.As a tax payers it used to annoy me immensely to hear of people constantly talking about the tools that they had stolen from Telecom as it was known then,or when the company threathen a crack down to hear of people asked to look after all the stolen tools that the police might find in their garage.The reason telstra employees are finding it hard now is because they`ve had it way too easy in the past.Good on the Americans for cracking down.




visual,

I very much doubt that any of those shown on the programme stole tools from telstra or were even employed at the time. Harassment and bloody mindedness is just that. If punishment is to be meted out to thieves it should be via the justice system or we'll become vigilantes with ad hoc 'corporate justice'. 

Optus has a  different culture to Telstra from what I've experienced of their customer service. I take no pride in being an Australian when I see fellow human beings treated like this by big corporates. Telstra can make a profit while being respectful to its employees imo, there is more than one way to be a market leader, ruthlessness towards people on your team is not a commendable attribute. Especially for a country with such a great sporting tradition and spirit of fair play. If they treat their employees like this you can imagine what they really think of customers- wrong attitude mate!


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## visual (22 June 2007)

Telstra telecom, has always being a shocker for service and whatever else they did,frankly I doubt that the workers actually knew they were there to work,I think maybe they honestly believed that we were there as a nuisance.Now that they are expected to work they whinge,bad luck,why do you think Optus has a different culture,they never had time to implement the telstra culture or maybe not being government owned they never had people willing to turn a blind eye,at any rate the problems at telstra are long standing maybe the reason why they had to get foreigners to actually try and fix the problems.As a telstra shoreholder I look forward to when telstra is actually run as a business and not a fiefdom of the person who answer the phone or drives the truck.


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## Santob (22 June 2007)

visual said:


> Telstra telecom, has always being a shocker for service and whatever else they did,frankly I doubt that the workers actually knew they were there to work,I think maybe they honestly believed that we were there as a nuisance.Now that they are expected to work they whinge,bad luck,why do you think Optus has a different culture,they never had time to implement the telstra culture or maybe not being government owned they never had people willing to turn a blind eye,at any rate the problems at telstra are long standing maybe the reason why they had to get foreigners to actually try and fix the problems.As a telstra shoreholder I look forward to when telstra is actually run as a business and not a fiefdom of the person who answer the phone or drives the truck.




What you'll probably get is a well paid lot of executives, underpaid and disgruntled staff and all desk jobs outsourced to India. Still worth the whinge then?


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## visual (22 June 2007)

Santob you sound like someone who`s missing out on all that free stuff.That as a taxpayer I`m paying for and now as a shoreholder I`m still paying for.

By the way I disagree with you about disgruntled staff,
just the other day a telstra technician attended my house,took all of five minutes to fix the fault and then only stayed outside my house for all of ten minutes in the past he would`ve got the herald sun out and spent the best part of an hour.


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## Uncle Festivus (22 June 2007)

visual said:


> So much whining and whinging about Telstra and the way it does business,maybe thats what it took,treating people like workers after decades of them treating the company like it was their own personal fiefdom.As a tax payers it used to annoy me immensely to hear of people constantly talking about the tools that they had stolen from Telecom as it was known then,or when the company threathen a crack down to hear of people asked to look after all the stolen tools that the police might find in their garage.The reason telstra employees are finding it hard now is because they`ve had it way too easy in the past.Good on the Americans for cracking down.




I think you are about 10 years behind the times there visual. Those day's are well and truly gone for not only Telstra but most of Australian industry - just have a look at the coal mines for capitulation.
I can only assume you have some sort of chip on your shoulder for why would you approve of the current management & the Americanisation of Telstra at the expense of Australian workers, who are literally paying for it with their lives.
So you must be really satisfied with Telstra's service then?. Are you with Telstra?
Long after these poor excuse for managers have ridden off into the sunset with their multi million bonuses Australians will be cursing both them and the short sighted politicians that were responsible for the whole basket case that is the public telecoms infrastructure (of which by the way we already owned before we were politely offered to buy it off ourselves)


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