Telkom restructuring suspicious due to racial thinking and lack of long-term vision - Solidarity

The Solidarity trade union today expressed concern over the continued shortcomings in telecommunications giant Telkom's efforts to become financially viable again. These shortcomings include a lack of long-term vision as well as a misguided attempt to use race as a criterion for retrenchments. This follows after Solidarity members received a notice of restructuring and possible retrenchments at Telkom in terms of sections 189 and 189A of the Labour Relations Act earlier this week.

According to Solidarity's Head of Industry, Marius Croucamp, the trade union is of the opinion that the latest restructuring plan displays the same shortcomings as all of Telkom's repositioning plans of the past number of years. ‘It is obvious that Telkom has to become financially viable again, but that will be impossible without a proper long-term strategy. This long-term strategy has to be formulated in collaboration with management staff - it should not be shrouded in secrecy, or even be absent, as is currently the case. Solidarity will urgently request the newly proposed organisational structure from Telkom in order to evaluate it for fairness and prudence.'

According to Croucamp, it is furthermore clear that Telkom's priorities are not in proper order since, on the one hand, the organisation pleads grave financial distress, while on the other hand, it is prepared to let the race of its employees' carry more weight than their performance. ‘Apparently, Telkom hopes to reduce its number of white employees by means of the restructuring process. This is the only conclusion that we can come to, based on the fact that so-called employment equity provisions forms one of the criteria to be applied in determining retrenchments. If any of our members are affected by this provision, we will not hesitate to fight it on the highest levels.'

Solidarity is currently examining Telkom's notice to its members regarding the retrenchment and restructuring process and it will communicate further details to its members and the public within the next few days.

Statement issued by Marius Croucamp, Solidarity spokesperson, May 14 2014

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