Members of the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) at Telkom are planning to down tools on April 18 and 19 after rejecting Telkom’s latest wage offer.
Talks between the two sides remain deadlocked after failing to make any headway at a meeting in Centurion near Pretoria on Tuesday.
CWU said it had indicated to Telkom at the meeting that its offer of April 6 was unacceptable.
“We did, however, make an endeavour which in our view would bring parties closer, without compromising on our core demands, particularly salary increases, job security, removal of the compression of grades, removal of the apartheid 20-percentile, fair allocation of Telkom shares and equal distribution of company profit,” the union said.
It said Telkom had responded by presenting a pro forma agreement explaining their offer, which CWU rejected.
“They indicated that the offer [same as per the 6 April 2006 offer] was only available until 12pm and that the agreement signed by the Association of Telkom Unions is the one that is on the table for CWU’s acceptance. We indicated that there’s no way we can agree to an offer that does not address the core demands of CWU,” CWU said.
“CWU is flabbergasted by the myopic behaviour of the Telkom board that fails to acknowledge and correct the injustice and unfair treatment of workers at Telkom. It’s clear that these members are only concerned about their remunerations and other benefits that they are getting at Telkom. CWU calls for the resignation off all Telkom officials that are anti progressive transformation of the company and the fair treatment of workers,” the union added.
It said CWU would withdraw “labour in total” on April 18 and 19.
“There will be no work for the two days in question. Activities planned for these two days will be informed by the provincial programmes. Some provinces will be marching to regional and local offices [of Telkom SA] whilst others will be having stayaways, human chains and other forms of protest actions,” it added. — I-Net Bridge