MultiChoice threatens civil action with looming ICTU strike
22 August 2019
ICTU confirm receipt of MultiChoice letter threatening civil litigation against ICTU in launching first historic strike against multibillion company served yesterday. Their understanding of the law is quite cumbersome but not really impressive.
Information Communication Technology (ICTU) once again is forced to lead workers onto first historic strike and has thus served MultiChoice (SA) with 48hrs strike notice. The strike action will begin tomorrow, 23 August 2019 and it is expected to inconvenience all customer 7.7m who are either having payment or service queries. This strike comes at the time when MultiChoice (SA)/MC(SA) has deployed new integrated billing system on 21 August and it is experiencing its own failures. It is expected that the strike action will be adding fuel to the fire.
This strike is in support of ICTU submission and position within retrenchments proceedings that MultiChoice has failed to provide evidence and or withheld proper evidence of their rationale as required by the law. Section 189 of Labour Relations Act (Act) compels the employer to reason its rationale for dismissals on operational basis which included providing substantiated and or prima facie evidence. In reporting back to workers, in the general meeting held yesterday, had voted for the strike and reflected that they are gatvol with abuse from MC(SA).
Notwithstanding this key aspect of making retrenchments proceedings to continue harmoniously, MultiChoice has went further to withhold or failed to provide information that ICTU has raised as its suspicion as the REAL reason to retrench as required by Sec16 of the Act. This compelling information will disclose the actual contemplation of retrenchments as the Act compels the employer to divulge such information and MultiChoice has failed to answer this question with arrogance that comes with billions of rand’s profit it comes with.
In absence of this critical information, the blatant arrogant R50.4bn profit company has then declared war with workers and ICTU. ICTU will not stand by the sideways and allow workers to be retrenched under fictitious reasons simply because 4IR has arrived. What irritate workers most is that MC(SA) has secretly entered into a third party agreement to service clients to perform current functions yet they claim technological usage is the reason to retrench.
Issued by Thabang Mothelo, ITCU Media Officer, 22 August 2019
