Telecommunications group Telkom on Friday announced that, following extensive facilitated consultations and deliberations, management and organised labour had reached consensus that the company’s current restructuring process would proceed.
“The parties have agreed that the process of placing employees and [offering] voluntary severance packages or voluntary early retirement packages for all management, will proceed next week,” Telkom noted.
The Labour Court had last month, following an application by trade union Solidarity, granted a court order prohibiting Telkom from making any appointments or carrying out any retrenchments until the facilitation process had been concluded.
This court order came amid allegations by the South African Communications Union (Sacu) and Solidarity of excessive job cuts and race-based retrenchments, with Sacu stating that the telecommunications giant planned to retrench about 9 500 of its 19 000 employees over the next six months.
Telkom at the time dismissed Sacu's claims as speculation, saying that it was "not targeting specific numbers” with regard to racial groups. The company had, however, pointed out that it planned to cut out some layers of management but had given no target numbers.