The South African Airways (SAA) Business Rescue Practitioners (BRPs) say they will soon conclude payment of Voluntary Severance packages (VSPs) after receiving further funding from the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE).
The BRPs say the first part of the payments for Cabin Crew and Ground Staff employees who took ‘VSPs’ at the end of August 2020 was paid last Friday.
The payment follows the receipt of a further portion of R5 billion from DPE, which has further allowed the BRPs to confirm the second payment.
To date, the BRPs have received a total of R7.8 billion in funding from DPE to implement the commitments of the Business Rescue Plan.
The remuneration elements will include among others, one week’s remuneration for each completed year of service.
The Voluntary Severance packages programme included 3 246 employee acceptances across all categories and closed at the end of August 2020.
Employees who signed the VSPs effectively concluded their employment with SAA and exited the company at that time.
The video below is about SAA unions filing urgent wage application at Labour Court in January:
Liquidation
Earlier this month, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) rejected suggestions that SAA should be liquidated, saying the national carrier can be a viable business.
The move followed repeated calls by the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) for SAA to be liquidated.
The Department of Public Enterprises has announced that SAA could exit administration later this month and a decision on an equity partner for it could be made by the end of March 2021.
Days before, the Labour Court in Johannesburg reserved judgment in the case regarding the dispute between unions and SAA Business Rescue Practitioners.
Numsa and the South African Cabin Crew Association (SCCA) in January filed an urgent court application to declare unlawful the practitioners’ decision not to pay union members their salaries.
The unions want the practitioners to pay outstanding three months’ salaries to their members. – Report by Mariza Whitehead
