Telstra Case
An In-depth analysis of Telstra:
Human Rights Obligations
Introduction
Telstra is the largest Australia’s leading telecommunications and information services company that offering a full range of communications services such as mobile network (Telstra, 2014). Its potential customers are ranged from Asia Pacific to Africa with the bright success performances. Therefore, it mainly involved large amounts of two stakeholders which are employees and customers.
Definition of Human Rights
Human rights refer to some moral principles which describe certain standards of human behavior. It protected by United Nations Human Rights Declaration and international law. Moreover, human rights are known as inherent in all human beings whatever our nationality, …show more content…
language, religion or any other status (Daniel 2012). We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination and these rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible as mentioned by OHCHR (The United Nations, Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights 2014).
Due to advanced technology development, consumers are easily to communicate with others just with a click everywhere. Besides, publics come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems, involved citizens and professionals to improve various aspects of communities. They could exercise their expression rights via online platforms. The advanced technology development enables Telstra to link people together and the whole community is link as an earth village.
Apart from this, employees are not only fighting for their salary but also the human rights regarding to the working conditions when the country is developing nowadays.
Different from the past, they expected the company could maximize the profits and project the human rights simultaneously. Otherwise, they would seek appropriate feedbacks. The expectation is one kind of social contract that combines both employees and organizations of views in order to maintain good relationship in the society. Regarding to another stakeholder, customers, Telstra has collected numerous personal data when customers agreed to join the services. How they keep the customers data is a great concern in terms of human rights as it is consequence if the data are used. Generally, a corporate image and goodwill are based on the trustiness and its ability to take the social responsibility. Especially, Telstra had obtained the majority of market shares of 40% within the mobile services in the telecommunication industry as the results revealed in the research (Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia), 2014). It had the obligation to influence the society.
In this essay, I will examine both positive and negative side on terms of human rights obligations of Telstra Company.
Discussions against Human rights
As the largest company in Australia, the working hours and wages distribution of employees are being the concerns. How Telstra mange the budget and how they treated the employees in the road of being a successful company? Is the company against the human rights obligation to the operation? Since many company become a sweatshop while they wholeheartedly focus on making profit maximization.
In terms of working hours, Fair Work Ombudsman stated that an employee can work a maximum of 38 ordinary hours in a week. Ordinary hours are an employee 's normal and regular hours of work, which do not attract overtime rates (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2014). A new system is created by Australian Government to monitor workplaces, then Fair Work Act 2009 is established (Australia Fair Work 2010, 52). However, some employees are still requested to nonstop working for long times or work overtimes without compensation. Even worse, children under 15 are forced to work over 15 hours a day without appropriate rights such having drinks or breaks in returns of absolutely low salary. What they need to work may be difficult or dangerous and the workplace was under socially unacceptable working conditions. Minimum wage and child labor laws may be violated as well. Those workers and the children are unluckily working for a “sweatshop”. Gaining the greatest profits with the least sources is the common strategy that a company demonstrated in their business, especially the large firm as they had the power to argue in the society.
In Jul 2014, as mentioned by David (2014), Telstra announced that they will send 671 Australian jobs into Asia as part of an outsourcing round. Outsourcing the local jobs may affect certain amount of employees in the local market. However it is not a great problem of a large company to outsource reasonable amount jobs, the hidden concerns is the low-cost labour. It is possible that they may find extremely cheaper labour in other country. All human have the rights to work for the salary but also the rights to work under good conditions. Although Telstra have denied the sweatshop claims of its subsidiary in India, Telstra is requested by The Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights to travel to China and investigate its phone supplier over working conditions(“Australian telecommunications company” 2012 ).
From different aspect, the problem of personal privacy is the concerns of customers. Since Telstra is a large success company in the global world. It obtained enormous amount of demographic data and geographic data such as names, ages and their address etc.
In Hong Kong, with reference to Six Data Protection Principles of the Personal Data Privacy Ordinance, it explained that the personal data shall be used with the given prior consent of data subject. Furthermore, it suggested that data shall be deleted upon fulfillment of the purpose for which the data are used in order to protect the stakeholders. (The Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data 2014)
It is dangerous that some hackers may use the information for illegal purpose as new technologies also create new ways to gather private information.Company should take the responsibility to protecting your privacy, keeping personal information safe and ensuring the security of customers’ data.
In addition, there are company would sell the information to others for profit.
For instance, company always received ten thousand amounts of warrantless requests. Take Telstra as the example, “Telstra has revealed that it released customer information for more than 84,000 requests from government agencies in the past financial year, 75,000 of which were warrantless” (Claire 2014). As mentioned by The Transparency Report of Telstra shows that the warrantless requests included customer 's name, address and service number etc. (Telstra, 2014)
The real situation above demonstrates that social contract is broken, and human rights of privacy are downgrade. However, Telstra have explained that the company was taken reasonable steps to maintain the security of information and to protect it from unauthorized disclosures (Telstra 2014). The statement is not clearly defined what the “reasonable steps” at the end are.
With reference of Privacy in Australian law, people have the rights to protect their privacy from others and the rights to disclosure and use the information. (The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner 2014). Therefore, Telecommunications (Interception) Act 1988 is established with a view to securing and regulating the privacy with effective and efficient …show more content…
methods.
Discussions for Human rights
On the other hands, workplace participation is another concerns regarding to human rights. As a leading telecommunications company in Australia, the terms and conditions are well covered as it involved human rights policy. Concerning to the policy, Telstra clarify that they will take all reasonable steps to respect the human rights of its employees, contractors, customers and suppliers including the rights of freedom of expression, freedom of religious belief, freedom of sexual orientation and gender identity (Telstra 2014).
Concerning the human rights, freedom of speech is one of important items.
It is delighted that employees are encouraged to have a meeting, at least once a month to discuss the improvement of the services as well as to express their point of views.
Additionally, Telstra have activated some social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube etc. these online platforms helps to reach mutually communications with customers and seek feedback from them.
Erasmus and Groenewald (2010, 438) proved that the greater sense of belonging of employees towards the company, the higher productivity and quality of products and services. A company helps individual employees develop a sense of ownership and pride towards their duties with the high transparency of the firm. In order to achieve high sense of belongings, it is the responsibility of Telstra to prove a stable, safe and comfortable working condition environment to employees known as fundamental human rights. “Connection is a basic human right” (Kingsmill 2014)
People are born to have community, meet friends and chat with them. Telstra did succeed to serve as a bridge to connect the people together with its technology to fulfill the society expectation.
Conclusion and improvement on
Telstra
To conclude, Telstra Telecommunication Company really did a bright success with the internal management and the marketing strategy. However, there are still certain areas that Telstra need to improve for better operations of the company. Especially, the company should make flexible working arrangement and awards to the outstanding employees. For example, Telstra should give flexible working arrangements to employees. It means that employees are given the rights to change hours, patterns and locations of work which refers to they can choose the start and finish times of work, split shift the works and working from home respectively.
It is convenient for the employer to assist jobs which are suit the employee. It is not only good for employee that they work with their preferred position but also helps employees maintain a balance between work and life. Joyful working atmosphere and conditions could improve the productivity and efficiency of their business. Last but not the least, the arrangement may raise the retention of workers, reduce absenteeism and reach greater productivity because of employee’ job satisfaction increased.
Moreover, entertainment is needed between employee and the company. Suitable entertainment helps to establish good relationships not only between employees themselves but also the employee and the company. For example, having outdoor activities, annual parties and travelling regularly as these are all human rights to relax.
Regarding to the fundamental human right to privacy, although Telstra claims that they only disclose customer information in accordance with the law, the ways of storage of the information data are being doubtful. It is advised that Telstra develops accuracy system to keep the information as customers are not only chosen your company because of your services but also the trustiness.
Words: 1702
References
“Australian telecommunications company Telstra urged to probe Chinese sweatshop claims” 2012. ABC News. June 21.
Claire. 2014. Telstra handed over metadata for 75,000 warrantless requests. Accessed Sep 25, http://www.cnet.com/au/news/telstra-handed-over-metadata-for-75000-warrantless-requests/
David 2014. “Telstra to outsource 671 jobs to Asia” Financial Review. Accessed Sep 27, http://www.afr.com/p/technology/telstra_to_outsource_jobs_to_asia_GLSvVz0n1OchD0doRhmSqM
Daniel Webb. 2012. “Human rights check for new laws” Human Rights Law Centre. http://hrlc.org.au/human-rights-check-for-new-laws/ Erasmus, Ferreira, and Groenewald A.W. 2010. Administrative Management. Juta and Company Ltd.
Fair Work Ombudsman 2014. Maximum weekly hours. Minimum workplace entitlements. Accessed Sep 28, http://www.fairwork.gov.au/about-us/policies-and-guides/fact-sheets/minimum-workplace-entitlements/maximum-weekly-hours#averaging-arrangements-hours-of-work
Kingsmill, Alexandra. 2014. “Telstra: 'connection is a basic human right '.” B&T MAGAZINE, January 24.
Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights. 2014. “Your Human Rights.” Accessed Sep 24, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Pages/WhatareHumanRights.aspx
Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia). 2014. “Telstra scores biggest gains in consumer mobile service market share in 2013 with four quarters of growth” Accessed Sep 28, http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/5472-mobile-phone-services-in-operation-market-shares-december-2013-201403062131 Telstra 2014. “Transparency at Telstra - Privacy.” Telstra. Accessed Sep 25, http://www.telstra.com.au/privacy/transparency/
Telstra 2014. “Telstra Privacy Statement (including credit report policy).” Telstra. Accessed Sep 25, http://www.telstra.com.au/privacy/privacy-statement/
Telstra 2014. “Human Rights Company Policy.” Telstra. Accessed Sep 25, https://www.telstra.com.au/abouttelstra/download/document/telstra-human-rights-policy.pdf
Telstra 2014. “About Telstra Corporation Limited.” Telstra. Accessed Sep 23, http://www.telstraglobal.com/
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner 2014. The Privacy Act. Accessed Sep 26, http://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-act/the-privacy-act
Human Rights Obligations
Introduction
Telstra is the largest Australia’s leading telecommunications and information services company that offering a full range of communications services such as mobile network (Telstra, 2014). Its potential customers are ranged from Asia Pacific to Africa with the bright success performances. Therefore, it mainly involved large amounts of two stakeholders which are employees and customers.
Definition of Human Rights
Human rights refer to some moral principles which describe certain standards of human behavior. It protected by United Nations Human Rights Declaration and international law. Moreover, human rights are known as inherent in all human beings whatever our nationality, …show more content…
language, religion or any other status (Daniel 2012). We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination and these rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible as mentioned by OHCHR (The United Nations, Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights 2014).
Due to advanced technology development, consumers are easily to communicate with others just with a click everywhere. Besides, publics come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems, involved citizens and professionals to improve various aspects of communities. They could exercise their expression rights via online platforms. The advanced technology development enables Telstra to link people together and the whole community is link as an earth village.
Apart from this, employees are not only fighting for their salary but also the human rights regarding to the working conditions when the country is developing nowadays.
Different from the past, they expected the company could maximize the profits and project the human rights simultaneously. Otherwise, they would seek appropriate feedbacks. The expectation is one kind of social contract that combines both employees and organizations of views in order to maintain good relationship in the society. Regarding to another stakeholder, customers, Telstra has collected numerous personal data when customers agreed to join the services. How they keep the customers data is a great concern in terms of human rights as it is consequence if the data are used. Generally, a corporate image and goodwill are based on the trustiness and its ability to take the social responsibility. Especially, Telstra had obtained the majority of market shares of 40% within the mobile services in the telecommunication industry as the results revealed in the research (Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia), 2014). It had the obligation to influence the society.
In this essay, I will examine both positive and negative side on terms of human rights obligations of Telstra Company.
Discussions against Human rights
As the largest company in Australia, the working hours and wages distribution of employees are being the concerns. How Telstra mange the budget and how they treated the employees in the road of being a successful company? Is the company against the human rights obligation to the operation? Since many company become a sweatshop while they wholeheartedly focus on making profit maximization.
In terms of working hours, Fair Work Ombudsman stated that an employee can work a maximum of 38 ordinary hours in a week. Ordinary hours are an employee 's normal and regular hours of work, which do not attract overtime rates (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2014). A new system is created by Australian Government to monitor workplaces, then Fair Work Act 2009 is established (Australia Fair Work 2010, 52). However, some employees are still requested to nonstop working for long times or work overtimes without compensation. Even worse, children under 15 are forced to work over 15 hours a day without appropriate rights such having drinks or breaks in returns of absolutely low salary. What they need to work may be difficult or dangerous and the workplace was under socially unacceptable working conditions. Minimum wage and child labor laws may be violated as well. Those workers and the children are unluckily working for a “sweatshop”. Gaining the greatest profits with the least sources is the common strategy that a company demonstrated in their business, especially the large firm as they had the power to argue in the society.
In Jul 2014, as mentioned by David (2014), Telstra announced that they will send 671 Australian jobs into Asia as part of an outsourcing round. Outsourcing the local jobs may affect certain amount of employees in the local market. However it is not a great problem of a large company to outsource reasonable amount jobs, the hidden concerns is the low-cost labour. It is possible that they may find extremely cheaper labour in other country. All human have the rights to work for the salary but also the rights to work under good conditions. Although Telstra have denied the sweatshop claims of its subsidiary in India, Telstra is requested by The Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights to travel to China and investigate its phone supplier over working conditions(“Australian telecommunications company” 2012 ).
From different aspect, the problem of personal privacy is the concerns of customers. Since Telstra is a large success company in the global world. It obtained enormous amount of demographic data and geographic data such as names, ages and their address etc.
In Hong Kong, with reference to Six Data Protection Principles of the Personal Data Privacy Ordinance, it explained that the personal data shall be used with the given prior consent of data subject. Furthermore, it suggested that data shall be deleted upon fulfillment of the purpose for which the data are used in order to protect the stakeholders. (The Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data 2014)
It is dangerous that some hackers may use the information for illegal purpose as new technologies also create new ways to gather private information.Company should take the responsibility to protecting your privacy, keeping personal information safe and ensuring the security of customers’ data.
In addition, there are company would sell the information to others for profit.
For instance, company always received ten thousand amounts of warrantless requests. Take Telstra as the example, “Telstra has revealed that it released customer information for more than 84,000 requests from government agencies in the past financial year, 75,000 of which were warrantless” (Claire 2014). As mentioned by The Transparency Report of Telstra shows that the warrantless requests included customer 's name, address and service number etc. (Telstra, 2014)
The real situation above demonstrates that social contract is broken, and human rights of privacy are downgrade. However, Telstra have explained that the company was taken reasonable steps to maintain the security of information and to protect it from unauthorized disclosures (Telstra 2014). The statement is not clearly defined what the “reasonable steps” at the end are.
With reference of Privacy in Australian law, people have the rights to protect their privacy from others and the rights to disclosure and use the information. (The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner 2014). Therefore, Telecommunications (Interception) Act 1988 is established with a view to securing and regulating the privacy with effective and efficient …show more content…
methods.
Discussions for Human rights
On the other hands, workplace participation is another concerns regarding to human rights. As a leading telecommunications company in Australia, the terms and conditions are well covered as it involved human rights policy. Concerning to the policy, Telstra clarify that they will take all reasonable steps to respect the human rights of its employees, contractors, customers and suppliers including the rights of freedom of expression, freedom of religious belief, freedom of sexual orientation and gender identity (Telstra 2014).
Concerning the human rights, freedom of speech is one of important items.
It is delighted that employees are encouraged to have a meeting, at least once a month to discuss the improvement of the services as well as to express their point of views.
Additionally, Telstra have activated some social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube etc. these online platforms helps to reach mutually communications with customers and seek feedback from them.
Erasmus and Groenewald (2010, 438) proved that the greater sense of belonging of employees towards the company, the higher productivity and quality of products and services. A company helps individual employees develop a sense of ownership and pride towards their duties with the high transparency of the firm. In order to achieve high sense of belongings, it is the responsibility of Telstra to prove a stable, safe and comfortable working condition environment to employees known as fundamental human rights. “Connection is a basic human right” (Kingsmill 2014)
People are born to have community, meet friends and chat with them. Telstra did succeed to serve as a bridge to connect the people together with its technology to fulfill the society expectation.
Conclusion and improvement on
Telstra
To conclude, Telstra Telecommunication Company really did a bright success with the internal management and the marketing strategy. However, there are still certain areas that Telstra need to improve for better operations of the company. Especially, the company should make flexible working arrangement and awards to the outstanding employees. For example, Telstra should give flexible working arrangements to employees. It means that employees are given the rights to change hours, patterns and locations of work which refers to they can choose the start and finish times of work, split shift the works and working from home respectively.
It is convenient for the employer to assist jobs which are suit the employee. It is not only good for employee that they work with their preferred position but also helps employees maintain a balance between work and life. Joyful working atmosphere and conditions could improve the productivity and efficiency of their business. Last but not the least, the arrangement may raise the retention of workers, reduce absenteeism and reach greater productivity because of employee’ job satisfaction increased.
Moreover, entertainment is needed between employee and the company. Suitable entertainment helps to establish good relationships not only between employees themselves but also the employee and the company. For example, having outdoor activities, annual parties and travelling regularly as these are all human rights to relax.
Regarding to the fundamental human right to privacy, although Telstra claims that they only disclose customer information in accordance with the law, the ways of storage of the information data are being doubtful. It is advised that Telstra develops accuracy system to keep the information as customers are not only chosen your company because of your services but also the trustiness.
Words: 1702
References
“Australian telecommunications company Telstra urged to probe Chinese sweatshop claims” 2012. ABC News. June 21.
Claire. 2014. Telstra handed over metadata for 75,000 warrantless requests. Accessed Sep 25, http://www.cnet.com/au/news/telstra-handed-over-metadata-for-75000-warrantless-requests/
David 2014. “Telstra to outsource 671 jobs to Asia” Financial Review. Accessed Sep 27, http://www.afr.com/p/technology/telstra_to_outsource_jobs_to_asia_GLSvVz0n1OchD0doRhmSqM
Daniel Webb. 2012. “Human rights check for new laws” Human Rights Law Centre. http://hrlc.org.au/human-rights-check-for-new-laws/ Erasmus, Ferreira, and Groenewald A.W. 2010. Administrative Management. Juta and Company Ltd.
Fair Work Ombudsman 2014. Maximum weekly hours. Minimum workplace entitlements. Accessed Sep 28, http://www.fairwork.gov.au/about-us/policies-and-guides/fact-sheets/minimum-workplace-entitlements/maximum-weekly-hours#averaging-arrangements-hours-of-work
Kingsmill, Alexandra. 2014. “Telstra: 'connection is a basic human right '.” B&T MAGAZINE, January 24.
Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights. 2014. “Your Human Rights.” Accessed Sep 24, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Pages/WhatareHumanRights.aspx
Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia). 2014. “Telstra scores biggest gains in consumer mobile service market share in 2013 with four quarters of growth” Accessed Sep 28, http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/5472-mobile-phone-services-in-operation-market-shares-december-2013-201403062131 Telstra 2014. “Transparency at Telstra - Privacy.” Telstra. Accessed Sep 25, http://www.telstra.com.au/privacy/transparency/
Telstra 2014. “Telstra Privacy Statement (including credit report policy).” Telstra. Accessed Sep 25, http://www.telstra.com.au/privacy/privacy-statement/
Telstra 2014. “Human Rights Company Policy.” Telstra. Accessed Sep 25, https://www.telstra.com.au/abouttelstra/download/document/telstra-human-rights-policy.pdf
Telstra 2014. “About Telstra Corporation Limited.” Telstra. Accessed Sep 23, http://www.telstraglobal.com/
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner 2014. The Privacy Act. Accessed Sep 26, http://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-act/the-privacy-act