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Johannesburg - Trade union Solidarity says Telkom’s plan to cut thousands of jobs as part of an ‘enterprise development plan’ is “economic death” for these workers.
The union plans to ask Telkom to review its restructuring plan in a meeting on Thursday.
Telkom is embarking on the second phase of its ‘turnaround plan’, which to date has involved outsourcing call centre staff and seeking to close several of its Direct stores.
Last week, Telkom announced that it plans to offer 4 400 employees voluntary severance packages or voluntary early retirement packages.
Furthermore, Telkom’s managing executive for group communication and public relations, Jacqui O’Sullivan, said that Telkom expects to also exit “around 3 400 staff” but the company will seek to “retain these skills, through outsourcing to other companies or through Enterprise Development (ED)”.
“The ED option is where Telkom will seek to assist existing employees to develop their own new businesses. These businesses, which will be owned and managed by former Telkom employees, would then be able to contract their services back to Telkom along with any other service providers in this growing and competitive industry,” said O’Sullivan in an email to Fin24 last week.
However, trade union Solidarity is unhappy about Telkom’s ED plan.
“It makes no sense to get rid of skilled employees with specialised knowledge, only to sign contracts with them later to obtain their services again. Telkom is dependent on these employees to provide proper service to the public,” said Marius Croucamp, head of Solidarity’s communications industry, in a statement.
As a result, Solidarity plans to table four demands when it meets with Telkom on Thursday.
The first demand involves reviewing Telkom’s enterprise development plan.
“Telkom professes that it is creating new opportunities for its employees who supposedly may be able to establish their own businesses and then to do work for Telkom under contract. In effect, Telkom will force these employees to make decisions about their future without providing them with any of the necessary information they need before making such a crucial decision,” said Solidarity in its statement.
In turn, Solidarity is wanting a full disclosure Telkom’s restructuring before a deadline is set for the “acceptance of severance packages or other changes in service conditions”.
Solidarity is also asking Telkom to postpone the implementation date of the restructuring process to allow greater consultation with trade unions. Solidarity further wants to establish working groups to help affected Telkom workers to make informed decisions.
Finally, Solidarity plans to table the issue of service delivery at Telkom. Solidarity claims that job cuts at Telkom are resulting in strained services to customers.
Telkom documents seen by Fin24 earlier this year indicated that the company on January 31 2015 employed approximately 18 384 employees.
If Telkom’s second turnaround phase goes ahead as planned, this means that 7 800 employees will be cut from the company.
