UNFAIR RETRENCHMENT AT MR PRICE DIVISION

I have been working as a Direct Marketing Consultant at Mr Price Division for 2 years, when the company wasn't doing so well in February 2019 we were going to face retrenchment in the month of March 2019 which meant that there were 36 agents that were to be a affected by the retrenchment, however Mr price practiced a very unfair retrenchment process since the company wanted us to re-apply for other positions within the company which was not within the same department as we were not doing sales however our company wanted us to apply in a sales environment which meant if you did not have sales experience chances of being recruited in that department were very slim, we were told to re-send our CV's and go through an entrance assessment again and that alone made us feel as if Mr price did not value us as their employees over the years, when we had consultations with HR there was a specific lady from the HR department whom was very unprofessional and very rude when we wanted clarity on some of the things that were not explained to us at all during these consultations, to be specific a discussion about our company shares was constantly brushed off when we needed to know what will happen to our shares since HR was only discussing the severance pay as part of the remuneration package which they also made calculation mistakes on our severance pay packages and we as agents picked it up ourselves which showed how unprofessional everything was handled. If you were permanently employed by the company for a year you aromatically became a shareholder and you received a notification to accept your shares that are with investec and you are than able to go onto your profile and check your accumulative vesting share price, while we were still employed by Mr Price we were told by HR which was also not sure that our shares will forfeit upon retrenchment and they kept telling us we needed to write a letter stating why we should be given our share monies, however the clause does not state that you will forfeit shares upon retrenchment. The clause simply stated " You can loose the shares if: You are dismissed due to misconduct, poor performance,proven to have been dishonest or involved in *****, you resign or you abscond" we went on with our research and called investec and the lady which i personally spoke to on the phone explained that you can withdraw your shares after retirement she explained the procedure and when i asked her what happens upon retrenchment she advised that the company has to send a confirmation letter stating that you are retrenched so they will release the money which she explained it takes 60 days to get paid to your account. We had a recording of the call, statement of our shares, the first proposed retrenchment letter which they only offered us one position within sales environment and when we asked as to why can't they place us within our department which was New Accounts since we could do every function within the department we were told that HR only had control over mobile department and they kept saying they would fast track the whole process but mind you we had to re-apply as mentioned above, we were treated like external applicants and during that time there was a new department which was opening which was the Retention's department and they never even suggested the fact that they could place us there and already there were applicants that were doing interviews and being recruited from the outside while we suffered enormous stress of having to re-apply and not granted space within the mobile department and not having sales experience for some of us was another huge factor that prevented us from even applying in the first place, so during these consultations we were told the company could retain 10 agents after the other agents went through application process and none of them were recruited within the mobile department after sending their CV's and writing assessments they were all told that they do not have sales experience which they saw that in their resumes when they received it but still made them go through all of that just to disappoint each and everyone of them by saying they don't have sales experience and some of these agents were told they not aggressive enough or too soft to do sales, some agents suffered from anxiety with all the level of stress Mr Price New Accounts Department put us through. The retrenchment was not fairly practiced since LIFO ( Last in first out) wasn't used when retaining the 10 agents and on that top 10 they chose there were agents that we knew are not even top performers but they were retained so it seemed like they wanted to get rid of some of us. We then went to the CCMA to file a case against Mr Price and we did not receive the help we needed, the commissioner that handled our case was also very unprofessional and he did not even introduce himself we ended up not knowing who he was there was a time were he just walked out of the room without even excusing himself to go and make copies which he came back and said the copy machine was not working so we had to take a picture of the letter he gave us using our phones he did not even bother sending the letter via email to us , he did not even care to ask for the evidence that we compiled for the case, we then went to the Senior commissioner to lay a complaint about the way our case was handled and he requested for the same case to be dealt with again by another commissioner which was also very rude and did not even want to listen to the whole side of our story, he also did not ask for us to present the prove that we comp**** and we suspected he wanted us to pay him money for him to actually grant the case as a CCMA matter even though he was speaking in riddles but we picked up a vibe that he wanted a bribe or some sort since in the middle of the case he asked the HR lady to step outside and he started speaking to us in IsiZulu which made me so annoyed cause he was undermining our level of intelligence so to say or as if we couldn't understand what was happening, he mentioned that he could put the case as a CCMA matter but if we do not come into an agreement with Mr Price then he would have to issue us with a letter of certificate to go to Labour court which he continued to say chances are were very slim for us to win that case and it was going to cost us money cause we would have to hire a lawyer that will want plus minus R5000 to open a file for us and since we all had our problems when we walk out the court room we may not be able to afford that, then when he told the HR lady to step back in he said to her he was explaining to us about legal aid which wasn't what he was focused on when he spoke to us it sounded as if he wanted us to pay him to actually put the case as a CCMA matter since we did not talk about money or asked him what should we do? He then said he is issuing us with a letter of certificate since Mr Price refused to compensate us , the commissioner did not give us a chance to even discuss the shares and did not even focus on how the company failed to follow the rightful retrenchment steps and did not even bother asking why LIFO was not practiced during that period? CCMA failed us we felt that it was a complete waste of our time filing this unfair retrenchment case with them since a lot just did not make sense and they couldn't help us in any way.