Call-centre staff fighting for R60m in salaries.
FOR THE SECOND TIME IN two years a court has ordered MTN to pay 38 call-centre staff members an estimated R60 million in salaries after they were illegally retrenched in December 2010. But, again, Africa’s largest mobile-phone operator ignored the order. Instead it labelled the claimants “deserters” and, illogically, accused them of failing to turn up for work during the time they were litigating against MTN in order to win the right to return to work.
The first order was made by the Labour Appeal Court in Durban on 21 April 2015. But because MTN defied the judgment by failing to pay up, the claimants – mostly mid-level supervisors, managers and general call-centre staff– were forced to bring another court application to help enforce the ruling. This second judgment was delivered on 4 May by Judge J Gush in the Labour Court in Durban.
The dispute arose in 2006 when MTN, which ran its own call-centre operations, contracted Interaction Call Centre (Pty) Ltd to run their Durban unit for them. Interaction was a BEE partnership between Dialogue Group Holdings (60%) which has since gone into voluntary liquidation, and Tlhalefang Placements (40%), a labour brokerage that provided a steady flow of lowly paid call-centre work to MTN both before and after the deal.
Maanda Manyatshe, then the managing director of MTN SA, said: “Ultimately, our intention is for MTN’s call centres in Polokwane and KwaZuluNatal to be outsourced”.
ICC ran the business – from staffing to operations. But on 1 December 2010 the contract was terminated by MTN, which said they had “taken a strategic decision to internalise the sourcing of the Pre-Paid Call Centre Services”.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة July 2017 من Noseweek.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة July 2017 من Noseweek.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Lennie The Liquidator Faces R500,000 Defamation Suit
After losing his cool when his fees were questioned
Panel Beater De Luxe
Danmar Autobody and its erstwhile directors get a serious panel beating in court papers. Corruption and theft are said to have destroyed the firm chaired by Nelson Mandela’s eldest daughter, leaving 200 workers destitute and threatening to kill.
Meet Covid Diarist Ronald Wohlman
Ronald Wohlman – EX SOUTH African copywriter, author, and actor – never dreamt that his lockdown diaries, written on Facebook and followed by people all over the world – would become his “life’s work”.
A Picture Of Peace?
Beware: Appearances can be deceptive
Flogging A (Battery-Driven) Dead Horse
Why plug-in vehicles are not all they’re cracked up to be– and, likely, never will be
Everybody Drinks Corona
I am hesitant to go Into the pub today. Not because it’s illegal, but there is a crème colored 1985 Mercedes 300D parked behind the pine tree. This means the devil is inside; that’s what we call Dr. De Villiers. You don’t know whether you will encounter the good doctor with the charming bedside manner or the violent, bipolar bully. The problem is, most of the time, you can never be sure which it is, so it’s best to always keep a social distance.
Never Take A Hypochondriac To A Pandemic
From Ronald Wohlman’s New York Corona Diary
The money train
Transnet in court battle with liquidators of Gupta-linked audit firm over R57m in ‘corrupt’ payments and invoices
‘He's no pharmaceutical genius, he's a vulture'
Pharma con seeks prison release to ‘help find Covid cure’
Bush school – A memoir
OUR SCHOOL WAS IN THE MIDDLE of the bush, ten miles from the nearest town in the harsh beauty of the Zimbabwean highveld. It started life in World War II as No 26 EFTS Guinea Fowl, a Royal Air Force elementary flying training school and I arrived there in 1954, just seven years after it became an all-white co-ed state boarding school.
