National trade unions are protesting plans to lay off the entire South African Airways (SAA) workforce after the South African government declined to provide further financial support for the flag-carrier.
Perennially loss-making SAA has been in the country’s “business rescue” process since December 2019 in an attempt at restructuring. However, South African media reports over the weekend said that the two business rescue practitioners heading the attempt to restore the company’s fortunes had issued proposals April 17 to lay off all 4,700 employees.
In a statement issued April 19, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and the South African Cabin Crew Association (SACCA) said that the proposals were unacceptable.
The statement, jointly signed by NUMSA general secretary Irvin Jim and SACCA president Zazi Nsibanyoni-Mugambi, said that the unions were in talks with the government “and are of the firm belief that SAA can be saved and will be saved ... we are alive to the fact that SAA will not survive in its present form and NUMSA and SACCA believe that it is time for extensive deliberation on options on how SAA can survive and in what form.”
The two unions said they believed that SAA remained a strategic asset for the country, despite the current problems stalking the worldwide airline industry.
Such a course of action was preferable to the lay-off proposals being made by the business rescue practitioners in the absence of a rescue plan, they said. The two unions protested that they had not been consulted on any aspect of the business rescue process.
If the plans for layoffs go ahead, it may mean the end of the line for 86-year-old SAA, which has been plagued by mismanagement, corruption and frequent changes of leadership in the past decade.
While the country’s government has been prepared to dole out several tranches of funding to keep SAA going in recent years there is an increasing hardening of attitude among several ministers against pumping any more money into the airline, given the country’s worsening economic position.
Representatives of SAA and the business rescue practitioners could not be reached for comment.
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