South African telecommunications services provider Telkom has announced its intention to proceed with the automatic transfer of staff from its call centre, supply chain and IT environments to new employers on 31 March after unions failed to secure a majority consensus on an additional offer from the company.

The telecommunications services provider and several unions, including the South African Communication Union (SACU), Solidarity and the Communication Workers Union (CWU), have been involved in a five-week negotiation process regarding the Section 197 process.

This process forms part of Telkom's recently announced restructuring plans and turnaround strategy.

According to Telkom, SACU and Solidarity recently requested that Voluntary Severance Packages (VSPs) and Voluntary Early Retirement Packages (VERPs) be made available to employees affected by the outsourcing initiative.

"Unions also requested that Telkom move the transfer date out from 31 March to 30 April," said a media release issued by Telkom.

"Telkom agreed to both requests. Written acceptance of the offer was required from the unions by Friday afternoon. While Solidarity and the South African Communication Union (SACU) accepted Telkom's offer ahead of the deadline, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) withheld the majority consent, which meant no agreement could be reached," the statement continued.

Company spokesperson Jacqui O'Sullivan said, "Solidarity and SACU engaged very aggressively for their members and we believe the variation agreement was a reasonable middle ground for all parties. However, a majority consent is required and without such an agreement in place, we will have to proceed with the automatic transfers as planned at the end of this month."

Telkom has also confirmed that persistent illegal industrial action in the form of "go-slows" at call centres has also escalated recently, with incidents of staff intimidation and walk-outs also reported.

"Our service levels have been under severe pressure for a number of weeks. We would like to apologise to all our customers for the poor service levels. We have brought additional staff into our already outsourced call centres and have increased our resourcing of the non-call centre customer options", O'Sullivan added.

All attempts to reach CWU representatives for comment proved unsuccessful at the time of publishing.