The African National Congress (ANC) says its position to save the cash-strapped South African Airways (SAA) has not changed.
It was responding to remarks by the party’s National Chairperson Gwede Mantashe over the weekend that the national carrier should be sold if it’s not profitable.
Last week President Cyril Ramaphosa reiterated that SAA will not be sold to private owners.
Speaking to the media after an Alliance Secretariat meeting, ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule said they have all agreed to save the airline.
Unions file court application over SAA job cuts
Meanwhile, the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) and the South Africa Cabin Crew Association (SACCA) have filed papers in the Labour Court for an urgent application to interdict the Business Rescue Practitioners at SAA from taking any steps towards the termination of jobs at the airline.
The unions also want the BRP to comply with the terms of the wage agreement signed last year compelling the employer to retrain workers facing retrenchments.
Christopher Shabangu is SACCA’s deputy president says, “There has to be proper Section 189 to be followed before this can happen….in this case, we just get told without any consultation….So we had to approach the court for this.”
Analysts say the layoffs will be key to reviving the fortunes of SAA, which is fighting for its survival after being placed under a form of bankruptcy protection in December.
But unions say specialists appointed to try to rescue SAAare attempting to push through the job cuts without following the country’s labour laws.
“We’ve gone to court in order to safeguard the rights of our members and to ensure that proper legal process is followed if retrenchments do occur,” NUMSA spokeswoman PhakamileHlubi-Majola said.
She said unions were concerned that SAA’s business rescue practitioners wanted to accelerate job cuts outside of the 60-day mandatory consultation period provided for in the labour law’s section 189 process. That is designed to give employees the right to challenge the fairness of layoffs or to go on strike.
NUMSA and another union, the South African Cabin Crew Association, are also seeking a second court order compelling the business rescue experts to implement a training layoff scheme negotiated as part of a wage deal last year.
The scheme would see a government training authority pay SAAworkers that could lose their jobs three-quarters of their salaries for a minimum of six months while they are retrained.
Hlubi-Majola said unions expected their application to be heard on Thursday. A spokeswoman for SAA’s business rescue team could not immediately comment.-Additional reporting by Reuters
