Talks between South African telecommunications services provider Telkom and organised labour over planned job cuts affecting the telco's Wholesale & Networks and Centre for Learning environments, are believed to have broken down.

Telkom issued a statement on Friday afternoon saying that organised labour, represented by the Communication Workers Union, trade union Solidarity and South Africa Communications Union, had declared a formal dispute with the telco.

In early June Telkom announced plans to shed 4 400 jobs through voluntary severance packages or voluntary early retirement packages, with an additional 3 400 employees set to be transferred to outsourced companies.

This was in line with the company's functional restructuring process as part of its Telkom 2.0 turnaround programme.

Jacqui O'Sullivan, Telkom's managing executive for group communication and public relations, said in a statement at the time, "We expect to exit around 3400 staff but importantly, Telkom will seek to retain these skills, through outsourcing to other companies or through Enterprise Development (ED). The ED option is where Telkom will seek to assist existing employees to develop their own new businesses. These businesses, which will be owned and managed by former Telkom employees, would then be able to contract their services back to Telkom along with any other service providers in this growing and competitive industry."

According to Telkom, "Despite a number of meetings over the past two weeks, Telkom and the Communication Workers Union, Solidarity and South Africa Communications Union have been unable to reach agreement on a process to progress this critical next step in Telkom's multi-year turnaround programme, and organised labour have declined to accept the offer of opening VSPs & VERPs across the impacted areas of the business. For this reason, engagements have been halted..."

In the latest statement Telkom has confirmed its intention to approach the Centre for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) to facilitate further engagement, and will also proceed with the issuing of Section 189 notices.

"We are disappointed that all parties involved have not been able to make meaningful progress with the discussions. We had hoped to further interrogate the options we have put on the table, to mitigate the impact these changes will have on many of our people but with discussions stalled, we believe the involvement of the CCMA is the correct and necessary next step", O'Sullivan added.

Attempts to solicit comment from union representatives proved unsuccessful at the time of publishing.