Unite union doubles down on claim Vodafone 'forcing' staff onto inferior contracts without redundancy

Thursday, 9 May 2019

Vodafone said it worked hard to ensure contracts were like for like better.

The Unite Union has repeated its claim that staff employed by Vodafone in Christchurch are being 'forced onto inferior contracts without redundancy'.

The union said in a media statement issued on Thursday that Vodafone, which is in the midst of a major restructure, was forcing staff on to 'sub-standard contracts' offered by Indian outsourcing company Tech Mahindra.

'Unite is representing a number of employees who face dramatically reduced pay and conditions as a result of Vodafone's latest restructuring process. Workers have been queuing up to join the union in the last week as they realised the scale of the reductions in pay and conditions,' the union said.

'The contracts initially provided had base salaries below the current minimum wage, huge cuts to redundancy entitlements and sick leave. Some were advised by Tech Mahindra to ignore these major issues and sign anyway and that they would be fixed up later,' the statement said.

Vodafone spokesman Richard Llewellyn said Unite's statement did 'not accurately reflect the effect of terms in the Vodafone employment agreement covering the changes that are taking place in our customer operations'.

* Vodafone NZ suggests job cuts fewer than 400 but won't confirm

* Union estimates big numbers of job losses at Vodafone**

He did not contest a claim by the union that some of the accumulated redundancy entitlements of transferring staff would be extinguished after one year's employment at Tech Mahindra, when given the opportunity to do so on Thursday, saying it was 'not for us to speak to the contracts provided by another company'.

Stuff has attempted to contact Tech Mahindra.

Llewellyn said last week that the company had extended the deadline for selected staff to sign contracts with Tech Mahindra from last Monday until, he believed, the end of this week.

He said then that Vodafone had worked hard alongside Tech Mahindra to ensure contract terms and conditions were 'like for like or better' than the terms and conditions with Vodafone, questioned the union's information and accused it of acting in 'bad faith'.

Unite said it had forced Tech Mahindra to delay the deadline for signing the new contracts and had achieved improvements in the salary levels and sick leave.

But it said the redundancy provision in the contracts would see staff lose up to 22 weeks of redundancy entitlement after one year from their current agreements.

'Unite is very concerned that this is because Tech Mahindra has only committed to retain existing staff for 12 months,' it said.

'Tech Mahindra could use existing long serving and experienced staff to train up new staff, potentially from overseas, and then one year and one day later, make them redundant with just four weeks pay – irrespective of their length of service,' Unite call centre lead organiser Shirley Wang said.

Wellington employment lawyer Barbara Buckett said companies could not reduce people's redundancy entitlements and still claim contracts were similar.

'The moment you detract from the 'same terms and conditions' you have got a problem.'

Documentation provided by Tech Mahindra to staff said there would be a 20-day cap on the amount of sick leave staff could carry over.

Base pay and commissions would stay the same and call centre workers would still be entitled to free cereal at work, that documentation said.

Tech Mahindra had signed a five-year commitment to Vodafone and 'beyond that we want to grow in this location and win more business', it said.

'Many of our customers are looking for on-shore support, as well as near-shore support in Australia and teams who can work in opposite time zones to the UK,' it said.

Unite said Tech Mahindra's contracts said it could seek damages, including for 'lost profits' and legal fees, against staff who breached the employment agreement 'by leaving a project in violation of this agreement'.

There was also an unreasonable 'restraint of trade' clause claiming a 'whole year's salary for a breach', it said.

Those terms were set out in a Tech Mahindra contract template dated April 29 that has been sighted by Stuff.

Unite said it had written to Vodafone 'identifying the deficiencies in the new contract and why the pay and terms and conditions are not substantially similar'.

'Unite has explained that under the current agreement this means that employees who do not accept the inferior offer are entitled to redundancy under their current agreement,' it said.

'Vodafone's response was to reject their employees rights but not offer any explanation how an 85 per cent reduction in redundancy, along with other reductions, can be 'substantially similar' to the existing contracts,' the union said.