Solidarity has accepted a new wage offer from Telkom, the trade union said on Tuesday.
“Solidarity yesterday [Monday] accepted a wage agreement at Telkom, which among other things, determines that salary disparities will be significantly reduced over the next two years,” said spokesman Jaco Kleynhans in a statement.
In terms of the agreement employees would receive a wage increase of 7,5%. “The agreement offers a significant improvement on employees’ salaries, especially since the wage increases will be implemented on top of the salary scale adjustment,” said Kleynhans.
He said the agreement also gave employees job security as it included a two-year moratorium on retrenchments.
Solidarity had approached Telkom last month to resolve the issue of salary disparities in the final wage offer. However, Telkom had already presented a final wage offer to trade unions on 10 July 10. Despite this, Solidarity maintained that the agreement would only be accepted once the issue of salary inequalities had been addressed.
Kleynhans said in terms of the new agreement, which was expected to be signed later this week, employees would receive a wage increase of 7,5% from 1 April to 31 31 July this year.
He said this was because the issue of salary scale adjustment had not yet been finalised during that period.
But from 1 August this year, Kleynhans said employees would receive a considerable salary scale adjustment based on their salaries as at 31 March 2009.
“In order to address salary disparities, employees remunerated below the 29th percentile will be brought up to the 30th percentile,” he said.
Employees, who are remunerated at the 30th to 44th percentile will then be brought up to the 45th percentile.
The 7,5% wage increase on top of the salary scale adjustment would also be given from 1 August, this year. “Additionally employees will also get a further salary scale
adjustment from April 2010 for the second year of the agreement.
“Employees, who are remunerated below the 50th percentile at that time, will be brought to this level, after which a wage increase of 7,5% will be implemented,” Kleynhans said. — Sapa
