Issue # 1408      29 April 2009

Telstra puts the touch on Big Issue vendors

Richard Titelius

Telstra has recently announced that it was proposing to have a photo of members of the Living Streets Choir feature on the front cover of Telstra White Pages for the phone book in Western Australia for 2009/10.

The catch is that the Choir members featured in the photo have been asked to sign a declaration that they do not have a criminal record.

Some of the choir members themselves have over the years acquired a criminal record, and feel that the request to sign a declaration is prejudicial and would exclude them from being on the cover of the phone book for relatively minor offences which may have occurred years before.

One Big Issue vendor (the magazine that raises funds for the homeless) who declined to be named said he was advised the reason Telstra sought to have these declarations from each choir member was the telco did not want to have any backlash from members of public saying that they had a photo of criminals on the cover of the White Pages Telephone book.

The vendor said that he and other vendors who were members of Bernard Carnley’s Living Streets Choir or the Working Voices Choir were offended by this request, saying selling The Big Issue was mostly volunteer work for which they received a small portion from the sale of each issue sold. Some of them have also had battles with mental health issues which may have also contributed to any criminal convictions incurred.

Telstra itself is engaged in more morally and ethically reprehensible conduct by seeking to move parts of its service provision offshore where it can pay cheaper wages and thereby strip more surplus value from the sweat of the labouring classes, be they call centre operators in the Philippines or India or there own workforce here in Australia – while simultaneously giving its own senior executives such as Sol Trujillo “golden handshakes” of millions of dollars.

Telstra should demonstrate more magnanimous conduct toward these poor and often homeless people rather than trying to degrade and belittle them.

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