The South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) facilitation meeting at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration (CCMA) has been postponed to 16 July. The meeting is part of the public broadcaster’s retrenchment process.
SABC employees will have to wait for another two weeks for the CCMA process to get underway. The meeting, which was partly held virtually, collapsed due to technical problems.
The corporation issued a Section 189 Labour Relations Act notice last month.
Employees are anxious about the process which could see 1 800 people losing their jobs. The retrenchments are expected to affect around 600 permanent workers and 1 200 freelancers.
This as the SABC forges ahead with its plans to reduce its salary bill by R700 million.
The public broadcaster recently appeared in Parliament where it was told that Section 189 notice was premature. However, the SABC management made it clear that retrenchments were part of the conditions attached to the R3 billion government bailout which the institution received.
Meanwhile, organised labour at the corporation is threatening to approach the courts if it not satisfied with the process at the CCMA:
