Hot fires technicians by messenger
Hot has fired technicians who refused to appear at layoff hearings.
On Friday, Hot Telecommunication Systems Ltd. (TASE: HOT.B1) sent messengers bearing layoff notices to technicians who refused to appear before layoff hearings. With this act, the company realized its plan to fire all its technicians, while keeping open their option of transferring to a contractor.
As part of Hot’s fight with its technicians, the latter struck the company’s technical system and disrupted the work coordination system. Hot’s 200 technicians were summoned to layoff hearings, after the company decided to outsource the technical system in same way as it has outsourced its customer services. The technicians and their union petitioned the court for an injunction against the move, but the court refused to intervene. Hot then implemented its plan, and summoned the technicians for layoff hearings.
When the technicians refused to appear for the hearings, Hot hired a security company to send layoff notices to the them.
Hot said, “The court dismissed the workers’ petition for an injunction against the closing of the technical system and the completion of its transfer of it to expert companies. Therefore, any technician who did not agree to our layoff offer, or to transfer to the specialist companies, received a summons for a hearing. An attempt was made to contact the workers who did not come to the hearing by telephone, to allow them to make their case. An SMS inviting them to the hearing was sent to those who did not respond, but regrettably there was still no response. Since they chose to forego the right to a hearing, the process was carried out in their absence.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news – www.globes-online.com – on August 25, 2013