Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU) Kenya Secretary General Francis Atwoli has called out Safaricom boss Peter Ndegwa on restructuring process targeting to scale down workforce by almost half.
In a statement, Atwoli said the move is inhuman, goes against ILO Conventions on the protection of jobs, and is an affront to workers’ rights.
Terming Ndengwa as the most dangerous CEO Safaricom has ever had, Atwoli threatened to appeal to the Board of Directors at Safaricom PLC to have Ndegwa be relieved of duty if he goes ahead and cuts the telcos’ labour force.
“It has come to our attention that Safaricom PLC is on a mission to restructure its mode of management whilst at the same time doing away with some of its employees. Even though, as COTU (K), we don’t have control over the management style employers adopt from time to time, we are highly concerned about the prospects of job security with the implementation of certain management styles,” said Atwoli.
“As reported in one of the local dailies today, the new CEO of Safaricom PLC Mr. Peter Ndegwa has caused a lot of anxiety among its more than 6,000 employees by asking a majority of them to reapply for their current jobs.”
He added that it’s insensitive and inhuman, for Ndegwa, to bring about drastic changes at Safaricom PLC while infringing on the rights of workers who have built Safaricom to what it is today where it enjoys more than 30 million subscribers.
Further, he accused the Safaricom CEO of causing depression among its employees in a bid to maximize profit.
“…if Ndegwa doesn’t stop this forthwith, we appeal to the Board of Directors at Safaricom PLC, including other shareholders, to make sure that Ndegwa is relieved of his duties because of his poor managerial style that seeks to maximize profits at the expense of its employees,” he stated.
The unionist claimed that Ndegwa, while serving as CEO for Guinness Nigeria PLC, faced off with unions from West Africa when he allegedly reduced the workforce by 45 per cent.
This comes after a recent memo to employees was released by Ndegwa.
“Two weeks ago, we started the journey towards becoming an agile organisation. This will enable us to serve our customers better by sustaining our customer obsession efforts, achieve deeper engagements with our colleagues, connect with our community and deliver greater shareholder returns for the company,” read part of the memo.
“As detailed in the organisational and divisional town halls, our agile transformation will unfold across several months. This will be through a graduated approach that will ensure we collect feedback and literate as we launch more tribes.”
According to Ndegwa, the restructuring process is intended to adopt an agile organisational structure, which will kick out the traditional hierarchical one.
Under the new plan, many of the current departments and offices will be collapsed in a move which will severally blur traditional boundaries between superiors and their subordinates.
The changes intended to make employees work in groups called squads, where several squads will form a tribe.
Implementation of the changes is taking place progressively with most of the communication to employees on the matter carried out through town hall meetings.
