Vodafone workers reject
compulsory redundancy package
By Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, Ghanadot
Accra, Aug 2, Ghanadot - Unionized
workers of Vodafone Ghana have vehemently refused to accept
the recently announced compulsory redundancy programme,
which targeted 950 workers.
The Chairman of the local Communication Workers Union (CWU)
of Vodafone, Emmanuel Darkwa,
indicated that the way in which management was rolling out
the redundancy programme was “autocratic”.
According to him “It was wrong for management to have held a
press conference without recourse to internal arrangements
with union on how to roll out that redundancy programme.”
Mr. Darkwa disclosed that the union met with management
under a binding Standing Joint Negotiations Committee,
chaired by the current Chief Finance Officer (CFO), Mr
Randell Hato, acting as Chief Executive Officer, to discuss
the comprehensive restructuring programme, which included
the voluntary redundancy programme.
It was mutually agreed that when management finished
drafting the programme, it would submit it to the union
executive for members’ perusal before implementation, he
observed.
“It is very sad that whiles we are going round the country
educating union members about voluntary redundancy,
management decided to hold a press conference in our absence
and announced a compulsory redundancy programme, of which we
had no prior notice,” he said.
He said union members had therefore been asked to reject the
letters given to them to virtually compel them to go on
redundancy since the mutual procedure agreed upon had not
been followed.
“The way management is bullying workers and laying off
people at will is autocratic and if they continue this way
we will rise against them and everything they are doing will
backfire in their faces,” he warned.
Even though management claimed to have duly informed the
National Labour Commission (NLC) about the compulsory
redundancy programme, Mr Dakwa said the normal procedure was
for the NLC to have formerly informed the national union
about it and invited a written response from union, but
union had not received any such formal correspondence from
the NLC.
He noted, for instance, that union requested that all
workers with salary levels 12 to six, covered under the
Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), should be exempted
from the compulsory exit, but management had resorted to the
use of threat, insults and other cunning means to cajole
some workers out of employment.
“They for instance, tell people to opt for redundancy
because of their age even though most of the people they are
compelling to leave have not reached the legal retirement
age of 60 years,” he said.
The union is even more surprised that their Ghanaian
colleagues in management had allowed themselves to be
cajoled by one man, the CFO, into rubbishing due process
against the workers who had held the fort for all these
years when previous foreign investors came and left.
Mr Isaac Abraham, Chief Manager, Corporate Communications of
Vodafone, on Friday held a press conference and announced
that 950 workers would be expected to exit Vodafone
compulsorily between now and November 2009.
He announced that affected workers would be given similar
packages like some 942 workers who exited voluntarily.
If that compulsory redundancy move succeeds, 1,842 out of
4,000 workers would have been laid off since Vodafone took
over the operations of Ghana Telecom (GT) last year.
Workers are not too enthused about the large-scale
redundancy because, as some of them put it, they supported
the Vodafone takeover of GT whole heartedly, not knowing
that they were about to close some units and lay workers off
in such huge chunks.
Currently, new local employees of Vodafone are being paid
higher salaries than their counterparts already in service,
and that, workers say, was one of the strategies to compel
them to opt for the redundancy package instead of continuing
to work for Vodafone.
The redundancy package include three months salary for every
year of service, plus a comprehensive transitional support
programme comprising of counseling on life after Vodafone
among other things.
Ghanadot
