More than 600 software engineers, product managers and digital designers—the core team sustaining the New York Times’ digital infrastructure—walked off the job, demanding increased pay and calling for an end to discriminatory performance management practices.
The latest round of global mass layoffs at Intel, Cisco, IBM and Apple in the last month is yet another episode in the deepening global crisis confronting workers in the tech industry and beyond
The CWA’s latest moves highlight the bankruptcy of the union apparatus which is desperate to shut down the strike by presenting a rotten contract that it can force down worker’s throats and pass off as a great victory.
The government will not be involved as a “neutral arbiter” but as the political agent of corporate America. Its top aim will be to help break the strike and ram through a deal favorable the company.
Telstra’s is the largest job cut announcement by an Australian company so far this year, but takes place in the context of a broader attack on working-class jobs and wages.
While bound up with the broader attack on jobs in the tech sector, the workers were also likely targeted for their role in organizing protests against the return to in-person work.
The Telecom Trade Union Front has fully accepted management’s abolition of the hard-won end of year bonus while claiming that management’s increased loan offer to workers is a “victory.”
The one-day national strike by Telecom workers powerfully demonstrated their determination to fight the Wickremesinghe government’s austerity measures.
The Communications Workers Union, which covers only some of the affected workers, but has substantial membership in other parts of Telstra, is working to ensure there is no organised opposition to the latest round of job cuts.
Union calls for increased involvement in the government’s restructuring and privatisation policies are not new and saw the elimination of over 2,000 Telecom jobs between 2000 and 2006.
The privatisation of state-owned enterprises and the destruction of tens of thousands of public sector jobs, are part of the IMF-dictated austerity measures being imposed by the Wickremesinghe government.