Trade union Solidarity has cautioned that 255 former Telkom employees transferred to business process outsourcing company WNS earlier this year as part of the telecommunication group’s Section 197 business transfer process are likely to lose their jobs, after WNS this week issued a notice stating its intention to consolidate its operations.

According to the union, WNS planned to consolidate the nine existing Telkom service centres with the two existing WNS service centres, resulting in the impending relocation of the Telkom service centres in Gauteng, Bloemfontein and Cape Town to Durban and Port Elizabeth.

Employees who did not accept a voluntary severance package or who could not be transferred were likely to be retrenched, it held.

This followed the issuing of a similar notice by Barloworld Logistics last month, in which the logistics company outlined that a planned reduction in its work premises from 35 to 17 would likely result in the retrenchment of around 112 former Telkom employees that had been transferred to Barloworld Logistics as part of the business transfer process.

Solidarity communications industry head Marius Croucamp asserted on Friday, however, that WNS may not, in terms of the Labour Relations Act, retrench former Telkom employees that had been transferred under the restructuring.

“Telkom is partly responsible for this process and has to accept responsibility for yet again subjecting these employees to restructuring within such a short time span.
 
“Solidarity will do everything in its power to assist its members during the process. Our members are our first priority and their interests come first,” he said in a statement.

Engineering News Online was unable to immediately contact a WNS representative to confirm the planned retrenchments.