Trade union Solidarity was gearing up to take telecommunications giant Telkom to task over labour processes during its “most aggressive” restructuring programme that would see thousands out of a job within a few months.

Addressing media at the union’s headquarters, Solidarity CEO Dirk Hermann said a crisis task team of top lawyers, senior researchers, counsellors and financial advisers would adopt a four-pronged approach to deal with the mass job shedding that it said could likely be JSE-listed Telkom’s downfall.

The campaign, titled ‘Tomorrow ends today’ – a spin on Telkom’s catchphrase of ‘Tomorrow starts today’ – aimed to halt a renewed effort to significantly reduce Telkom’s 18 333-strong workforce.

The group was offering voluntary severance or voluntary early retirement packages to around 4 400 employees, while another 3 400 staff would either be outsourced to other companies through a Section 197 business transfer process or enter Telkom’s enterprise development programme, which would allow former Telkom employees to contract their services back to Telkom.

However, there were indications that retrenchment through the Section 189 process could potentially be pursued should Telkom not meet its reduction target.

To date, 724 employees have already accepted packages and 1 170 employees have already been transferred to outsourced companies.

Telkom noted at a presentation of its full-year results on Monday that it needed to move towards a “leaner and more productive” workforce, with its ambitions of achieving a staff cost to revenue ratio of 25% over the next four years set to be accelerated in the 2016 financial year.

Hermann slammed the move amid a “healthy financial” structure at Telkom, which, this week, paid out excessive dividends to its shareholders – a major beneficiary of which was the government.

“Telkom has a history of poor decisions by top management,” he said, indicating that the current restructuring programme would be the most detrimental to the company, as it failed to take into account the operational requirements of Telkom.

Telkom had overstretched staff, with the increasing exit of skilled employees, and was now battling to remain efficient amid unhappy customers, service deficiencies, thousands of account disputes and a flailing call centre.

“Telkom will pay a high price,” Hermann claimed, pointing out that while the telecommunications firm was cutting its costs, it was also “cutting the throat” of its core business – people and services.

Solidarity planned to institute legal action against Telkom, assist its affected members with financial advice and counselling and develop and propose alternative rescue strategies.

Hermann explained that Telkom had left itself “wide open” for legal action as it failed to follow the correct procedure for retrenchments as it “rushed” the restructure.

The expected Section 189 notices did not emerge, Telkom had failed to extensively consult unions before embarking on its workforce reduction plan and employees were only given a short, uninformed period to accept the voluntary packages, also without consultation – a disconnect from the Labour Act.

“Telkom has already decided exactly how many people have to pack their bags by 2018 [and] when they have to leave the company, and has started to offer voluntary severance packages to employees before employees have been made aware of all of these alternatives,” he said.

Further, with the process set to have an “enormous” emotional impact and financial implications for employees, Solidarity would offer financial advice and counselling for its members as they faced tough decisions.

Solidarity had instructed its financial advisers to compile information sheets that would outline the advantages, disadvantages and impact of the options currently on the table, while information sessions where counsellors would provide basic trauma counselling with groups of employees would be arranged, Hermann said.

Finally, the union’s research team, headed by Piet le Roux, would evaluate Telkom’s sustainability and table independent recommendations.

“The trade union has already, on many occasions, requested Telkom to provide more information about its planned new business model so that its viability and impact on employees could be examined in depth.”

Telkom had now instituted “work forum” sessions to provide more information.

“We, therefore, contend that Telkom’s process is premature and that the work forums should first be given the opportunity to complete their work so that the information emanating from the forums can be analysed and to afford us the opportunity to propose meaningful alternatives during a formal consultation process,” Hermann concluded.