Trade union Solidarity has brought MTN's restructuring and retrenchment process into the spotlight by claiming the operator does not want to play ball during the consultation process.
In a statement released today, the union said: "MTN yesterday turned down Solidarity's request for its retrenchment process to be facilitated by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA). Solidarity's request came after MTN initially failed to consult adequately about the retrenchment process which affects 847 of its managers."
Marius Croucamp, head of Solidarity's communication industry, notes that MTN has lost the opportunity to remove doubt about the fairness of the process. "By turning down our request for facilitation of the retrenchment process, MTN has once more plunged the process into uncertainty and suspicion.
"We are convinced that an outside party, such as the CCMA, could have helped prevent doubts about the procedural correctness of the process," he said.
Croucamp added that the circumstances accompanying the retrenchment process are lowering the morale of MTN's employees. "We receive daily enquiries from distraught employees who have been deprived of all job security. We believe MTN was supposed to have been open and honest with its employees about the true extent of the retrenchment process," Croucamp added.
The trade union said MTN - in a communication to employees - let on that Solidarity was "protracting the process unnecessarily" by requesting that negotiations be extended. Croucamp said the union's main aim was to ensure that MTN's retrenchment process was implemented in a fair and sound manner.
"The only way in which this can be achieved is if the process is extended to allow for proper consultation," he said.
MTN could not respond by the time of publishing, although the operator's chief HR officer Themba Nyathi has previously noted that the company expects consultations to continue until the end of September.
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