Hospersa supports members during Netcare restructuring
The Health & Other Service Personnel Trade Union of South Africa (Hospersa) came out in full support of members affected by Netcare’s latest restructuring move. The Union was successful in halting the earlier plans of Netcare to start with wholesale restructuring without proper consultation in terms of the law.
During a meeting held at Netcare’s head office yesterday, Hospersa was able to confirm that the restructuring process would now only affect five hospitals and, more importantly, it would now be limited to the Gauteng province. This is in stark contrast with the earlier indication from Netcare that it would be a countrywide process affecting numerous institutions. Netcare also undertook to afford more involvement to the affected staff members through consultative processes and insight into the impact assessment exercise used to inform management’s pronouncements in this regard.
“We are really glad that Netcare has come to its senses with this process,” said Hospersa General Secretary Noel Desfontaines. “Hospersa pointed out from the beginning that the process was flawed, and now it seems that our pleas with management at least bore some fruit,” he added.
According to Netcare the plan would now only affect five Gauteng hospitals, namely Linmed, Olivedale, Garden City, Sunninghill and Pretoria East. It also tabled a time schedule for assessments to be finalised by 12 July 2016 and Hospersa was promised that all affected staff would be introduced to the impact study team. This would include an explanation of the so-called “Deep Dive” exercise, an impact assessment being done by an external provider.
“The fact that we are now being allowed to share in the impact assessment information used to inform the decision-making processes of the management team, is really appreciated,” said Desfontaines. “Hospersa has always proven itself to be a worthy counterpart when it comes to joint decision-making processes, and we will always balance the rights and interests of our members with the sustainability of enterprises. The viability of new business strategies is of equal importance to us as the representative of employees, as it would be to investors and other stakeholders,” he said.
According to Netcare the Deep Dive process will include three main phases, namely diagnostics of the current status, workshops to highlight issues identified during the diagnostic phase, and culminating in consolidation of all the information into a report with recommendations to the management team.
“We are cautiously optimistic about these developments and we will continue engaging and making inputs on behalf of our members. Hospersa is well-experienced with these processes and we will align all of our resources to ensure the best possible outcome for our members,” concluded Desfontaines.
The next meeting was scheduled to take place on 28 June 2016.