POLOKWANE – TELKOM employees downed tools last Thursday in a bid to delay the transfer of outsourced staff to new employers, which is due to begin on Monday.
Communication Workers Union (CWU) shop steward in Polokwane, Mack Mamorobela said Telkom wanted to retrench employees on March 31. He said every time that Telkom had financial problems, their only solution was to retrench people, and this was unacceptable.
Some of the CWU members have embarked on a protest outside Telkom offices next to SABC park pic.twitter.com/3VTnpSYuxp
— Thokozile Mnguni (@ThokozileMnguni) March 27, 2015
“Around 1999, Telkom had about 70 000 employees and now the company has only 18 000 employees. The majority of people losing jobs are our African brothers and sisters,” he said.
Telkom spokesperson, Jacqui O’Sullivan, said the CWU had indicated to Telkom that they would like to take up the offer of voluntary severance and voluntary retirement packages for those employees affected by the current outsourcing plan, and who would prefer not to be transferred to the new companies.
“Telkom first made the offer of the packages to all unions about two weeks ago. CWU declined the offer and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and Solidarity accepted it. At the time, the offer was withdrawn as CWU had withheld their majority consensus. We were, however, able to extend the offer to individual unions through the use of variation agreements. Once SACU and Solidarity signed variation agreements with Telkom, we were able to legally offer the packages to them, individually,” she said.
“CWU yesterday indicated that they do, in fact, now wish to take up the offer of the packages. We are encouraged by this but we will also require CWU to sign a variation agreement with us, to legalise the offer. We hope this variation agreement will be signed shortly,” she said.
“This is the same offer we made two weeks ago. We are not offering anything additional. Also, the CEO announced on Monday morning in a broadcast
to all staff, that the transfer date for the current Telkom employees to be moved to their new companies has been deferred by a month. The personnel will now transfer on April 30 and not March 31,” she said.
“This additional month was also part of the original offer that was made to all unions. It was taken off the table when the offer was withdrawn when CWU
declined but it was discussed over the weekend and it was agreed that we would wait another month,” she said.
