Telkom happy to talk to CCMA

Telkom welcomes the referral of the matter of remuneration of employees in its largest unit to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA).

In response to a threat by trade union Solidarity to approach the CCMA, Telkom said in a statement on Friday that this could "only assist in further guiding the jointly decided upon resolution" on salaries within the Data Advance Services (DAS) unit.

Solidarity had given Telkom's executive management until Friday to agree to an urgent meeting to discuss remuneration of employees of the DAS unit.

Should no meeting date materialise, the union would then approach the CCMA, Solidarity said in a statement on Thursday.

"There are currently discrepancies among employees in the MCNO [mobile cellular network operator] office as well as between employees in this office and employees in the DAS unit," Solidarity spokesman Jaco Kleynhans said.

"Although all of these employees are on the OP1 level in Telkom and the vast majority of the employees in the DAS unit are frequently required to also do specialised work for the clients of MCNO, certain MCNO employees receive much better salaries and benefits," he said.

The MCNO office deals with the maintenance of the decentralised networks of large companies and DAS unit handles company switchboards and data transmission lines.

Telkom said on Friday it had been in constant talks with the national leadership of organised labour.

"At a recent company forum in May, a joint proposal was agreed to by all parties, but all three labour unions that represent Telkom's bargaining unit staff wanted to socialise the proposals with their members."

At a meeting in early June organised labour agreed to the implementation of the joint proposal, Telkom said.

"A joint task team then commenced with the implementation process."

Thereafter, at a meeting on June 15 with Telkom and all three unions, including Solidarity, the earlier proposals were amended by organised labour, Telkom said.

"Matters previously raised that concerned the remuneration of DAS employees only was amended by the unions to include all employees on the OP1 level."

Telkom said it had to take the matter back to management.

"The company still views this matter as a DAS issue and not one that includes all personnel across the OP1 level, as was clearly articulated in a memorandum of understanding that was agreed to and signed by all parties on February 19, 2010."

Telkom remained committed to the recommendations made in the report by the forensic investigation team on discrepancies in remuneration pertaining to the MCNO environment in DAS.

"Part of the joint proposal being implemented by the joint task team is to investigate and propose enhancements to the current Differentiated Reward Model (DRM) -- the mandate of the team is to review the DAS environment, and subsequently the OP1 remuneration model."

All parties agreed that the task would be incorporated into the existing differentiated reward model team's objectives as outlined in the current Substantive Agreement (2009-2011), Telkom said.