SITA restructure a 'smokescreen'

Restructuring at the State IT Agency (SITA) is just a smokescreen for retrenchments, says labour union Solidarity.

It says its members' jobs were declared “redundant” within the new structure in letters issued by the agency. This “clearly shows that the organisation's controversial restructuring process is nothing more than the first phase of a large-scale retrenchment process”, the union says.

“Solidarity's repeated demands to be involved in consultations regarding the restructuring have fallen on deaf ears, and the trade union is in the process of obtaining a legal opinion, which could result in legal action being taken against SITA.

“SITA not only refused to release the criteria that were used to declare certain positions 'redundant', but also changed its employees' conditions of service unilaterally. A unilateral amendment of conditions of service, without prior consultation with employees, is unfair in terms of common law and comes down to breach of contract,” says Marius Croucamp, Solidarity spokesperson.

He adds that a restructuring process is a common precursor to retrenchments and is often used by employers as a means to limit forced retrenchments. “However, SITA is refusing to admit that retrenchments are on the cards.”

A SITA employee, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of losing his/her job, says there were several choices when staff received the letter. The first is, depending on their level, employees could be assessed for competency. “If you are not assessed... they decide to place you or displace you. The second option is to accept and sign the [new employment] contract, despite badly-written clauses. If not accepting the contract, employees are placed in a pool.”

All employees in the pool have 12 months or less to decide whether they choose a voluntary severance package, early retirement, relocating to a new vacancy, or being dismissed and getting a new job.

Anthea Summers, GM of corporate communications at SITA, says the agency, now in its second year of implementing its turnaround strategy, is not retrenching employees. “This is not the language that SITA is using in this turnaround journey.”

She added that, as part of its turnaround strategy, the agency set up the weekly Management Consultative Forum and the Employee Consultative Forum, during which managers and staff representatives had an opportunity to engage with the SITA executive members to give their views on processes.

“The point that I want to emphasise is that there was consultation and communication within the organisation, every step of the way on this turnaround journey. SITA is now at the stage where people are being placed into positions, as per the new organisational design and the agreed upon process.”