Vodafone Suspends Redundancy Exercise?
The National Labour Commission (NLC) on Wednesday asked the management of Vodafone Ghana to suspend its compulsory redundancy exercise until further notice.
Mohammed Affum, Public Relations Officer of NLC, revealed that the directive was issued by his outfit after the management of Vodafone Ghana informed the NLC that it had planned to meet the workers on September 24, 2009 over the redundancy exercise.
He confirmed that the NLC had also directed both management and union of the company to meet them on September 30, 2009, stressing, “If the matter is not resolved by the two parties on that particular date, we would be forced to take a final decision on the matter.”
The management of Vodafone Ghana is yet to submit a response to the NLC regarding the petition of the Communication Workers Union (CWU).
According to Mr. Affum, the NLC's directive does not necessarily mean that the exit letters given to the workers were invalid, adding that the matter would be determined on September 30, 2009.
After weeks of disputes between the management of Vodafone and the local and national CWU, the management of the company finally issued lay-off letters to individuals including the local and national union leaders on Wednesday, September 9, 2009.
Prior to the issuance of the letters, the union had described the management's procedure as autocratic and a violation of the workers' rights, adding that the management had disregarded the binding decisions taken at a Standing Joint Negotiation Committee meeting.
Following the complaints of the CWU and TUC, an inter-ministerial team, comprising of representatives from the Ministries of Communications and Employment and Social Welfare intervened in the matter but it failed to resolve it.
On September 14, 2009, a tripartite meeting between the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare, management of Vodafone and the CWU/TUC also failed to yield any positive results.
Earlier, Major Albert Don-Chebe (Rtd), Head of Corporate Communications said that the union through their actions and inactions were “buying time to push the issuance of exit letters to workers beyond September to make nonsense the three month notice requirement for a lay-off.”
“If the letters issued on September 9, 2009 were declared invalid by the NLC, it becomes impossible for anybody to be laid off by December 2009 and could protract the redundancy exercise,” he added.
Major Albert Don-Chebe (Rtd) explained that the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the unionized workers and management would be discussed in December 2009, noting, “We hope to lay-off all persons earmarked for redundancy exercise.”