Orange Kenya’s chief executive officer (CEO) Mickael Ghossein has lauded the Communications Workers Union of Kenya (COWU) for choosing to dialogue instead of industrial action over various grievances.
COWU states its grievances include unfair termination of staff on short-term contracts, non-payment of overtime, and unrealistic and unattainable targets imposed upon them.
Orange and COWU have now entered into a dialogue process after the pair signed a Recognition Agreement to guide the process of coming to a resolution. The agreement states until the procedure is fully exhausted, no lockout or withdrawal of labour will take place.
Dialogue will continue with the Ministry of Labour and Human Resource Development acting as conciliator between the parties, and Ghossein commended the union for its restraint.
“The union made known its grievances to the Management of Telkom Kenya and we initiated the dispute resolution process,” he said.
“The strike notice issued by the union disregarded the recognition agreement and we are grateful for the intervention by the Ministry of Labour and Human Resource Development in asking COWU to suspend the strike indefinitely, in order to pursue dialogue to its conclusion.”
Ghossein did however deny the union’s claims of unfair termination of staff contracts.
“No employee has been terminated unfairly. The specific contracts of the Direct Sales Agents being referred to were fixed term contracts, which were set to end on May 15, 2013. On expiry of these contracts renewal depends on performance and business needs.
“Payment of overtime is clearly stipulated in the collective bargaining agreement and we have been paying overtime based on the claims approved and presented through the established company procedure.
“Many of our employees have been achieving their targets and those in sales have been earning their sales commissions. We have not received any complaints from staff regarding their targets.”
