Telstra will cut more than 200 jobs across its global finance and service operations businesses and potentially offshoring as many as half of the roles.
On Friday the Communications Workers Union revealed it had been notified by the telco that 204 operational billing and credit services and accounting, business intelligence and analytics services roles would be let go, with 139 either outsourced or sent offshore.
Another 35 technical workers from the complex billing solutions team - which supports the global finance services team - will also lose their jobs.
Telstra confirmed the plans. It said 35 of the 204 finance roles under threat were currently vacant, and that it would redeploy as many affected workers as possible.
"We constantly review the way we work to simplify our business and remove duplication. These proposed changes would consolidate some work because we are standardising our reporting and processes," a Telstra spokesperson said.
"This is not a move we take lightly and we will consult and work closely with our people on this. We take our responsibility to support employees through this period very seriously and we absolutely understand the impact announcements like this can have on our employees."
The CWU said it is yet to discuss the changes with Telstra, but criticised the telco for chasing a workforce strategy that is "clearly being driven simply by a relentless search for cheap labour".
Just last month the telco revealed it would cut 326 customer support jobs and transfer an undisclosed number to its Phillipines call centres.
The Community and Public Sector Union claimed at the time Telstra had offshored a total of 10,000 jobs, and launched an online petition urging Telstra CEO Andy Penn to reverse the July redundancy round.
