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27 November 2009

Telkom refutes claims of 4000 job losses

Pursuant to Solidarity’s claims that Telkom plans to retrench 4000 contract and temporary employees, the following clarification merits emphasis.

Firstly, it must be noted that as part of the existing substantive agreement between Telkom and organised labour as represented by the Communication Workers Union (CWU), South African Communications Union (SACU) and Solidarity, there is a two-year moratorium (1 April 2009 to 31 March 2011) with regard to the forceful retrenchment of permanent employees.

Telkom currently employs just over 4000 temporary staff who have been acquired through service providers (labour brokers) to deal specifically with variations in our need for human resources due to cyclical business circumstances. As part of the Company’s business optimisation process, our reviews indicate a need to reduce temporary staff in certain business areas based on current and future business requirements.

It must be noted that Telkom is not directly terminating the employees of the labour brokers but is reducing the levels of service provided by these suppliers. The process of reviewing the services rendered by third party suppliers will continue as the Company endeavours to drive down costs in our business operations and processes.

The temporary reduction programme is aimed at reducing the number of temporary employees and not full-time employees. Therefore, as stated above, the process does not have any impact on the agreed moratorium on the forceful retrenchment of full-time employees.

Telkom and organised labour have been in extensive discussions and a Task Team, comprising of management and organised labour, has been established to deal specifically with this matter. The Task Team will meet during the course of next week and recommendations will be made to Telkom’s Restructuring and Company Forums in order to ensure a coherent way forward with the support of organised labour.

As per an agreement with CWU, Telkom has agreed to defer the termination of temporary employees until 31 December 2009.

In view of the above, claims that Telkom aims to shed 4000 jobs are, therefore, unfounded, inaccurate and totally baseless.

For further enquiries, please contact:

Pynee Chetty

Senior Specialist: Media Relations

Group Communication

Tel:+27 12 642 1716

Mobile: +27 81 389 7874

Email: chettpr2@telkom.co.za

 OR

Leigh-Ann Francis

Specialist: Media Relations

Group Communication

Tel: +27 12 642 1728

Mobile: +27 81 391 4780

Email: francilm@telkom.co.za

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ABOUT TELKOM:

Telkom is a leading communications services provider in South Africa. We had consolidated operating revenue of R16.8 billion and normalised profit after tax of R1, 683 million for the period ended 30 September 2015. Total assets amounted to R41.9 billion and equity attributable to the owners of Telkom to R23.5 billion as of 30 September 2015. The group generated normalised free cash flow of R1.4 billion for the period ended 30 September 2015.

As of 30 September 2015, we had approximately 3.3 million telephone access lines in service and 1,030,441 ports connected via MSAN access. We offer business, residential and payphone customers a wide range of services and products, including:

  • fixed-line retail voice services using PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) lines, including ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) lines, and the sale of subscription based value-added voice services and calling plans;
  • fixed-line customer premises equipment rental and sales services both voice and data needs and these include PABX, Computers, Routers, Modems, Telephone handsets and other ancillary equipment;
  • interconnection services, including terminating and transiting traffic from South African mobile operators, as well as from international operators and transiting traffic from mobile to international destinations;
  • fixed-line data services, including domestic and international data transmission services, such as point-to-point leased lines, ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line) services, packet-based services, managed data networking services and internet access and related information technology services;
  • Data Centre Operations includes e-commerce, application service provider, hosting, data storage, e-mail and security services;
  • W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), a 3G next generation network, including fixed voice services, data services and nomadic voice services;
  • mobile communication services, including voice services, data services and handset sales through our mobile navbar-brand called Telkom Mobile;
  •  information and communication services including cloud services, infrastructure services, workspace services, global service integration management and hardware and network equipment sales locally, in seven African countries, the UK and Dubai through Business Connexion Group; and
  • other services including directory services, through Trudon (Pty) Ltd, wireless data services, through Swiftnet (Pty) Ltd.

Convergence is one of our key strategic initiatives in building a sustainable future for Telkom.  We will lead the provision of converged services in South Africa in support of our mission statement: Seamlessly connecting people to a better life.