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Telstra has been forced into an embarrassing backdown after it was revealed the company had undercut employees’ legal entitlement to carer’s leave in a pay offer made to staff last week.



The company has had to withdraw the offer to employees in its Wholesale and Service Advantage divisions after unions discovered it contained a serious breach of workplace laws. Several clauses in the document halve the legal minimum requirement to give workers up to 10 day’s annual carer’s leave.



Despite public denials that it had done nothing wrong, late last week Telstra sent a new, revised offer to its employees with the offending clauses altered to comply with the law.



ACTU Secretary Jeff Lawrence said the breach of the standards in the offer demonstrated the need to have union involvement in genuine negotiation over wages and employment conditions.



“Without unions negotiating for staff, who knows what else is wrong with the proposal and how are workers’ rights protected,” Mr Lawrence said.



The Australian Industrial Relations Commission will today hear an application by the three Telstra unions to help end the dispute with the company by conducting a ballot of employees about whether they want a union-negotiated collective agreement or a non-union deal as the company is insisting.



Telstra management is using the damaging remnants of the Howard Government’s Work Choices laws to deny workers the right to be represented by unions.



Many Telstra staff rightly believe they can get better pay and conditions from genuine collective bargaining and mistrust the company after it was revealed management had a plan to slash its wages bill by sidelining union involvement in negotiations.



 “Since Telstra walked away from the negotiating table, the 70% of workers covered by the current enterprise agreement have been denied their choice to be professionally represented in bargaining,” Mr Lawrence said.



 “This request to the commission is about giving Telstra workers a democratic say in their employment conditions.”