CWU to hand over list of demands to government over SABC retrenchments

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) has outlined their list of demands, due to be handed to government, saying they believe the SABC may have issued more Section 189 letters than originally stated.

The CWU has served the SABC with notice to resume strike action, as the public broadcaster forges ahead with retrenchments.

Sister union, BEMAWU, has announced that they will join the strike after the SABC issued a number of redundancy and surplus letters to staff this past week.

The SABC claims that it has to reduce the wage bill to make the organisation financially sustainable.

CWU General-Secretary, Aubrey Tshabalala, says they will lead a motorcade to the Union Buildings on Wednesday.

“Retrenchment is about individuals, warm bodies. We need a list of affected workers. You can’t say you are retrenching 303 but you don’t know who are those, so the union can be in the position and represent the workers effectively. We are not even sure that 303 got letters. The way the letters are going out is even more than what was happening in November. In November, we were told 400 positions were affected. In reality, 800 people got letters. We don’t know now because we don’t have the list.

BEMAWU to join CWU in a strike action against SABC retrenchments:

BEMAWU to also strike

Trade union BEMAWU says its members will take to the streets over the ongoing retrenchment process at the SABC, if the public broadcaster does not conduct the process fairly.

BEMAWU president Hannes du Buisson said they are concerned about what is happening.

“We got an opinion from members at this point in time and the majority of people who responded; members who’ve responded indicated that they want to proceed or participate in the strike. That is the only legal and constitutional way in which employees can fend off retrenchments. It is in terms of the law it is protected and that is what they are entitled to do.”

“We not just going to jump into a strike right away, we are going to write another letter to the SABC Board where we are requesting an audience with them as we have done previously so that we can see if it’s not possible to avert a strike at the SABC.”