Following trade union Solidarity’s claim that Telkom could shed in excess of 10 000 jobs in the next step of restructuring, the embattled telecommunications group unveiled its plans to transfer some employees to outsourced suppliers.

The company on Monday issued a Section 197 notice for some of Telkom’s internal businesses, including its direct stores, call centres, information technology (IT) legacy systems and internal printing and supply chain and properties, which would see impacted staff transferred to new employers outsourced to Telkom within the next few months.

The employees would be sent to several identified external companies tasked by Telkom to take over the call centre operations and the management of the IT legacy systems, Telkom’s supply chain warehouses and internal printing activities.

“The official consultation process will begin on Friday this week, with more consultations to follow over the coming weeks. Affected staff have also been informed,” the group said in a statement.

However, Telkom did plan to shut the doors of some of the 95 Telkom Direct Stores, which were no longer viable, to realise significant cost efficiencies, and had issued the affected employees Section 189 notices.

“Telkom will explore every option to place the affected employees impacted by this process in other areas of the business. Should such attempts be unsuccessful, some of the affected employees may unfortunately be retrenched,” the company said.

Telkom reiterated that Solidarity’s claims of a restructure of the “field force” was not a correct reflection of the discussions currently under way with organised labour.

“The Telkom field force is currently not part of the discussions with organised labour,” Telkom concluded.