The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, June 6th, 2001. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ****************************** One.Tel: Rorts and Rip-offs One.Tel is a story of corporate greed, corruption, insider deals, self-aggrandisement by company directors, betrayal of friends and most of all, complete disregard of the workers who made the wealth upon which company directors fed like pigs at a trough. The One.Tel collapse is a direct consequence of the policy of deregulation and the privatisation of Telstra, begun by the previous Labor Government and continued by the current Howard Government. The situation calls for: * legislation to ensure that workers' entitlements be paid into a trust fund by companies during the course of employment and used only for that purpose; * comprehensive awards be fully re-established for the benefit and protection of all workers; * a halt to the further privatisation and contracting out of Telstra; * the Labor Party to commit itself to the restoration of Telstra as a fully publicly owned company. Telstra as a single national entity could provide an efficient and cheap telecommunications network offering the very latest technology and thousands more jobs in research and the manufacturing of equipment in Australia. Its piece by piece carve-up and the entry of private "competitors" will eventually lead to the complete break up of the network into squabbling, incompetent and "profit comes first" privately owned segments. Telecommunication workers and the general public will be the losers. It is most likely that much of the publicity given to the collapse of One.Tel has arisen because of the participation in the company by James Packer and Lachlan Murdoch, and the fact they got their fingers burnt to the tune of nearly $1 billion. They are out for revenge against their "mates" who they claim kept them in the dark about the true financial status of One.Tel and made them look incompetent and foolish. None of the burning issues are resolved by Brad Keeling, one of the One.Tel corporate cowboys, simply repaying the $7 million bonus that he and fellow director Jodee Rich, paid themselves before jumping ship. Riding high on the bandwagon in an election year, Prime Minister Howard, ALP leader Beazley and NSW Premier Carr have loudly demanded that the money be used to meet the entitlements of the sacked workers. It is a simplistic remedy. It turns out that most One.Tel workers, if not all, were on individual work contracts that did not provide for entitlements in the event of dismissal. The Community and Public Sector Union has successfully applied to the Industrial Relations Commission for award coverage that would entitle the employees to severance pay and other entitlements. The trade union movement has failed to campaign strongly against individual work contracts or adequately warn workers against signing them. In the same period, many awards have been virtually destroyed or relegated. In a display of breathtaking hypocrisy, Howard declared that the Federal Government would not oppose the union's application for an award and the payment of entitlements. But what about the thousands of other workers who have been sacked in the recent past by other companies without payment of their entitlements? No water-tight protective legislation has yet been put in place. The promise of the Carr Government to introduce legislation holding company directors responsible to pay entitlements out of their own bonuses is policy on the run, an empty gesture to win applause out of an immediate emotional situation. Company directors have many other ways of milking huge sums out of a company by setting up shelf companies, manipulating share prices, granting themselves shares as part of a salary package, by tax avoidance and minimisation schemes, and by doing business with other companies which they own, to name just a few. All these rorts are made perfectly "legal" by laws or loopholes legislated by governments. The One.Tel board was a corporate club made up of big business mates and old school tie acquaintances. The story of their dealings reveals the cynical immorality of this "elite" group who manipulate others through their wealth and control of the media. There is no intention on the part of the Howard Government to stop the process that will inevitably lead to more One.Tel type collapses and scandals. How many hundred of thousands of employees in Australia work for similar companies, vulnerable to the rip-offs and rorts of directors such as those exposed in the One.Tel collapse? ************ Editorial: Privatisation behind telco crash The bankrupting of One.Tel and the financial losses and inconvenience for One.Tel customers is a direct consequence of the so-called "competition" and privatisation policies first introduced by the Hawke-Keating Government and assiduously implemented by the Coalition. Competition policies were specifically aimed to break up and privatise publicly owned enterprises such as Telstra and public transport systems and, as a bonus for the private enterprise jackals, the sell-off of the Commonwealth Bank, Qantas, airports, government insurance companies and anything else that could turn a profit. Although a nominal 51 per cent of Telstra remains in government hands, the fact is that many operations formerly carried out by Telstra and its highly competent and trained staff are now contracted out to private companies. Although the White Pages still lists "Sales" (including installations) an inquiry will be immediately referred to a private company when one wishes to support a publicly owned enterprise. Telecommunications, by its nationwide networking, can only be efficiently carried out by one operator and this should be retained as public property. This is what happened in the past over many years and it was this public ownership and management that built up the telecommunications network that now exists. Having built the network, governments are now hell-bent on selling it off to corporate predators and breaking it into little incompetent pieces. A government concerned for the interests of the Australian people would have directed the board of Telstra to fulfil its social obligations to the country and the city and also substantially lower phone tariffs. It could have retained staff and provided the Australian people with the benefits of new technology. It could still do this. Instead governments have appointed to the board persons who are also working for its privatisation agenda and the sabotaging of the integrity of a publicly owned telecommunications network. One.Tel was one of the many predators, intent on lining the pockets of their executives and shareholders, who were given rights to take their pickings from Telstra's business. The real face of the corporate world has been well illustrated by the payment to two retired directors of bonuses amounting to $14 million, not to mention the millions more they skimmed from the timely sale of their shareholdings. The predatory nature of capitalism has also been exposed by the actions of Optus in attempting to force One.Tel mobile phone users to switch to Optus. It is par for the course these days that corporate managements make no provision to pay the staff their accumulated entitlements let alone display any concern for their future employment. The demand voiced by Costello and Beazley that the two directors should pay back these bonuses and that corporate laws should be tightened to require more disclosure of management dealings is no more than a diversion from the real issues. If the Labor Party now sees that corporate law is inadequate it was just as inadequate when the Labor Party was in office and the same rip-offs (Christopher Skase for one), went on during their time in government. Another angle is the fact that employees were tied into the company by holding shares. One worker is quoted in the The Australian newspaper (31/5/01) as saying: "We have lost more than our jobs. We have also lost a lot of money on our shares, which were part of our salary package. They kept saying the share price wouldn't go down, the business was fine." But Adler, Rich and Keeling, who have ripped off One.Tel workers to the tune of $25 million, knew better than to believe their own tails and got out before the company crashed and selling of their shares before their value fell. They left their billion dollar mates Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer high and dry, more than $900 million of their investments now worthless. It is the whole policy of "competition" and privatisation that has failed. If it is not reversed there will be more One.Tel and HIH collapses in the future with management clearing out and ripping off other shareholders and workers. Not only should a future Labor Government tighten up corporate laws but it should take immediate steps to restore the whole telecommunications service to public ownership and democratic control. *************************************************************** -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
