Cape Town, 27 Nov 2009
Telkom has reached an agreement with organised labour about the retrenchment of certain staff.
However, it refuses to release details of the numbers, or disclose if it will only affect contract workers or those in permanent employ.
Yesterday, trade union movement Solidarity issued a statement saying Telkom was planning to “unfairly retrench 4 000 staff”, whose contracts expire in March next year.
Telkom spokesman Pynee Chetty confirms Telkom met and reached an agreement with organised labour, and that the meeting included Solidarity and the Communication Workers Union. However, he refused to comment on the exact numbers of people who stand to lose their jobs, saying: “You must ask Solidarity how they came up with that number.”
No Communication Workers Union spokespeople were available for comment. The union and Telkom signed an agreement in August this year that included no more forced retrenchments of staff and a 7.5% salary increase.
Solidarity spokesman Jaco Kleynhans says in a statement that contract and temporary workers were simply informed of their dismissal, and he accuses Telkom of not following labour regulations.
“Although, by right, a complete Section 189 retrenchment process, including a consultation process with the relevant trade unions, should have been followed, Telkom did not follow this procedure at all,” Kleynhans claimed.
He also said employees were simply informed the termination of their services would be brought forward, with the process now being carried through.
Telecommunications sector analyst Irnest Kaplan says he would be very surprised if Telkom had to retrench 4 000 workers, as this represented 20% of its workforce.
“If they were going to do this, they would have informed the analysts at the recent results briefing,” he notes.
Kaplan says labour costs only represented between 30% and 40% of Telkom's overall cost structure, and it could still make significant savings on better network utilisation and other areas.
He says that, while Telkom could be looking at reducing headcount in some areas, this could occur either through natural shrinkage caused by not replacing people who leave, or redeploying staff to other business areas.
“I think some of their operations, such as those in Nigeria, Kenya and Namibia, could use some staff.”
Late last year, Telkom caused an uproar when it announced its “capability management” programme, which would have seen it outsource up to 90% of its core businesses and the possible transfer of between 14 000 and 19 000 of its 24 000 workforce to outsources. However, this plan was put on hold, but never cancelled outright.
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