Telkom plan to transfer hundreds of workers faces opposition

Trade union Solidarity says it will oppose a move by Telkom’s to transfer 260 employees to an outsourcing company by May this year.

According to Marius Croucamp, Deputy General Secretary of the Communications Industry at Solidarity, Telkom announced at a meeting yesterday that employees would be transferred to an outsourcing group, WNS, in terms of a tender process that had been followed.

“Solidarity does not support Telkom’s decision to transfer employees to WNS by any manner of means. Former Telkom workers, who were transferred to the company in October last year, are currently working under adverse and uncertain working conditions,” the union said.

“Many of the 255 Telkom employees who had been transferred last year have since been retrenched,” Croucamp added.

Croucamp said that WNS does not have the necessary human resource capacity to accommodate additional employees, nor does it have proper structures in place to support all its employees.

“Due to the previous transfer process several of the company’s human resource functions have fallen short, resulting in the late payment of overtime and pension, for instance. We are most concerned about our members’ job security who will now be transferred to WNS,” he said.

Solidarity further questioned the tender process that Telkom has followed, requesting all documents relevant to the process, including the applications from and details of the other bidders.

“As soon as we have studied the information we will determine a strategy for the process going forward,” it said said.

In February this year Telkom announced that it would embark on a restructuring process affecting around 560 employees. Of those, 300 would possibly be retrenched and the rest would be transferred to another company in terms of a section 197 transfer process.