A "historic" MultiChoice strike is coming on Friday, 23 August, as angry MultiChoice call centre staffers say that their strike will inconvenience all DStv subscribers in South Africa who have payment or service enquiries as MultiChoice's new billing system struggles with technical implementation failures.
MultiChoice on Thursday told TVwithThinus that the planned strike of its call centre staffers is illegal and unprotected.
The Information Communication Technology Union (ICTU) on Thursday announced that the "the grossly underpaid and most vulnerable workers of MultiChoice South Africa have drawn a line in the sand" and will start an industrial strike on Friday that will leave MultiChoice's millions of DStv subscribers in the lurch when they call about payment, account or service enquiries.
"This strike comes at the time when MultiChoice has deployed a new integrated billing system on 21 August and it is experiencing its own failures," the ICTU revealed in a statement.
"It is expected that the strike action will be adding fuel to the fire," said the trade union that said that "the ICTU will not stand by the sideways and allow workers to be retrenched under fictitious reasons simply because the Fourth Industrial Revolution has arrived."
"What irritate workers most is that MultiChoice 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."
The ICTU said that "the strike action will begin tomorrow, 23 August 2019, and is expected to inconvenience all 7.7 million customers" of MultiChoice's DStv pay-TV service in South Africa.
In June 2019 MultiChoice announced that it was planning to fire up to 2 194 of its workers as part of a massive retrenchment plan to get rid of thousands of staffers in its call centre division and walk-in centres because the Randburg-based pay-TV operator is restructuring its "customer service delivery model".
MultiChoice at the time said the "realignment" had to be made because of the "changing behaviour of customers, who are increasingly moving away from traditional voice calls and visits to Walk-in Centres and adopting new self-service and digital technologies to engage with the company".
MultiChoice in response to a media enquiry told TVwithThinus on Thursday night that "MultiChoice is disappointed at the call for a strike by the ICTU".
"We remain committed to continue to consult with labour on the proposed restructure in our customer care division under the guidance of the CCMA appointed commissioner in line with the Labour Relations Act," said Joe Heshu, the MultiChoice Group's executive for corporate affairs.
"The threatened strike action is not only unprotected, it is also illegal. We call on all parties to act in a manner that will ensure the best outcome for impacted employees."
MultiChoice was part of Naspers until it was spun off and listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) at the end of February 2019.
