The Freedom Front Plus, which has waged a parliamentary campaign against retrenchments at Telkom, has congratulated the partly state-owned company and its three trade unions after an agreement was struck to put the redundancy of 4 300 of its workers on the back-burner.
Freedom Front Plus MP Willie Spies said in reaction to a story in Afrikaans daily newspapers on Friday that in a country where nearly 50% of the population is unemployed “and the government has a declared policy of job creation, it just does not make any sense that a public company, in which the government is a majority shareholder, would let its workers go in the interest of profits”.
“The campaign of the trade unions is seen as the most comprehensive and now also one of the most successful examples in the South African labour history,” he said.
Spies congratulated the Communication Workers’ Union, the South African Communications Union and Solidarity on their successful campaign.
Spies noted that the proposed Telkom action to make workers redundant also became an issue in Parliament when the FF+ requested a debate on the situation.
“The debate took a surprising turn when the official opposition Democratic Alliance sided with the African National Congress against the organised labour movement and, in Parliament, defended the actions of the management of Telkom.
“The announcement last week that Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana personally intervened in the dispute indicates that the issue had become a political hot potato for the ANC since the debate took place last year,” said Spies.
“The apparent breakthrough is not only a breakthrough for organised labour, but also for larger humaneness in corporate governance in South Africa.” — I-Net Bridge