The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) has expressed deep concern about the ongoing wave of retrenchments at various media houses in South Africa.
This comes after Primedia, a media house that owns 702, KFM and Cape Talk, as well as national news brand Eye Witness News (EWN), announced its decision to retrench some of its staff.
The Primedia Group has 786 fulltime employees, including 323 at Primedia Broadcasting, which is the largest division. However, the media company has not made an announcement on how many of its employees will be affected by the retrenchments.
Primedia’s decision comes after Media24’s announced of a possible 510 retrenchments, which follows news of possible retrenchment of 600 employees at the SABC.
“Sanef has calculated that approximately 700 jobs have been lost already through retrenchments in the print media sector including the closures of Associated Media Publishers (AMP), the selling of the magazine division of Caxton and also the closures of approximately 80 small print media publications, across the country, organised under the umbrella of the Association of Independent Publishers (AIP)” said Sanef in a statement.
Sanef full statement on retrenchments below:
Unions representing SABC employees threaten to approach court over retrenchments
Organised labour at the SABC is threatening to approach the courts after the public broadcaster ignored a letter of demand in respect of the retrenchment process.
Broadcasting, Electronic, Media & Allied Workers Union’s (Bemawu) Hannes du Buisson says they partnered with the Communications Workers’ Union (CWU) to issue the letter highlighting concerns over the SABC’s attempt to consult directly with its employees.
