Telkom ‘will start’ retrenchments

Following a court victory against telecommunication giant Telkom, three trade unions — Solidarity, the South African Communication Union and the Communication Workers Union — on Monday announced the appointment of a commission of inquiry to look at the rationale behind the company’s planned retrenchments.

On Sunday the court ruled in favour of the three unions to stop Telkom from offering voluntary severance and early-retirement packages to workers from Monday.

The unions had sought legal action against Telkom’s plans to go ahead with the planned retrenchments of about 4 100 workers over the next three years.

A Telkom statement on Monday afternoon confirmed that it has been requested to postpone the implementation of planned retrenchments until it has concluded consultation talks with labour unions on the rationale to reduce staff numbers.

In the statement, Telkom employee relations executive George Nkadimeng said: “Telkom will honour the Labour Court judgement and remain committed to the consultative process in full compliance with the Labour Relations Act [LRA].

“Telkom will be able to start implementing voluntary severance and early-retirement packages from September 14 whether Telkom and organised labour reach agreement by this date or not.”

The statement added that Telkom was on Sunday night granted leave to appeal on the court’s ruling.

Telkom maintains the offer of voluntary severance and early-retirement packages is “voluntary” and believes it is “entitled to make the offer to affected employees without consultation with organised labour”.

“It is only in circumstances that [Telkom] intends to dismiss employees for operational reasons that it needs to comply with the process as envisaged in the LRA,” the statement said.

Telkom said consultation talks kicked off on August 6 at the request of organised labour, which wanted an independent facilitator for consultation talks with the telecommunications giant. Further meetings had been agreed on for August 24, September 4 and September 13, which are being facilitated by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.

Telkom also said it is meeting with organised labour ahead of consultation talks to examine the business rationale behind Telkom’s review of its business from an operational perspective.

“As part of its ongoing drive to create shareholder value, Telkom continues to review, streamline and refocus its business in response to the changing market in which it operates.

“It does this by identifying growth opportunities and continuously improving efficiencies and productivity. In line with this, the number of fixed-line staff is expected to decrease by between 7% and 10% a year over the next three years,” Telkom said in the statement.