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SABC withdraws Section 189 notice served on unions

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The SABC has been forced to withdraw the Section 189 notice served on broadcast union BEMAWU and the Communication Workers Union regarding retrenchments at the public broadcaster.

This is according to president of BEMAWU, Hannes du Buisson, who met with SABC top executives on Friday.

Du Buisson says the SABC conceded that they had not supplied all the information in the notice as required by the Labour Relations Act and would therefore retract the notice and prepare a new one to be served on the unions.

“That information would include for instance the number of employees that the SABC intends to retrench, also the job categories. We wanted to know what measurements the SABC has already considered and why it was not implemented.

The SABC called the meeting to brief the unions on its planned staff retrenchment process and turnaround strategy, citing the high salary bill as the reason for reducing staff.

Du Buisson says, “I think the strong message that was sent out to the SABC today is that we are very serious about the fact that a number of employees stand to lose their jobs, and that we will not allow any process to not be followed by the SABC. In fact we have insisted that the Labour Relations Act must be followed to the letter.”

Earlier on Friday Cosatu announced it was supporting its affiliate the Communications Workers Union in its fights against the planned retrenchment of workers at the SABC.

Cosatu says it the SABC board fail to come up with creative ways of stabilising the broadcaster without laying off workers – “this board must be removed”.

The SABC has agreed to appoint a CCMA facilitator in this process. “The way forward is then that we will receive a new notice,” Du Buisson says.

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