“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.<\/p>\n
In terms of the agreement employees would receive a wage increase of 7.5 percent for the next two years.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
He said the agreement also gave employees job security as it included a two-year moratorium on retrenchments.<\/p>\n
Solidarity had approached Telkom last month to resolve the issue of salary disparities in the final wage offer.<\/p>\n
However, Telkom had already presented a final wage offer to trade unions on July 10, this year.<\/p>\n
Despite this, Solidarity maintained that the agreement would only be accepted once the issue of salary inequalities had been addressed.<\/p>\n
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 percent from April 1 to July 31 this year.<\/p>\n
He said this was because the issue of salary scale adjustment had not yet been finalised during that period.<\/p>\n
But from August 1 this year, Kleynhans said employees would receive a considerable salary scale adjustment based on their salaries as at March 31, 2009.<\/p>\n
“In order to address salary disparities, employees remunerated below the 29th percentile will be brought up to the 30th percentile,” he said.<\/p>\n
Employees, who are remunerated at the 30th to 44th percentile, will then be brought up to the 45th percentile.<\/p>\n
The 7.5 percent wage increase on top of the salary scale adjustment would also be given from August 1, this year.<\/p>\n
“Additionally employees will also get a further salary scale adjustment from April 2010 for the second year of the agreement.”<\/p>\n
“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 percent will be implemented,” Kleynhans said.<\/p>\n