SAA strike is a lose-lose situation

The standoff between management and labour at Airways Park, the headquarters of SAA, has reached crisis level after the airline announced it was cancelling most of its flights from today into the weekend.

The offer document tabled by the airline’s head of employee relations, Lourens Erasmus, on Wednesday, proposes SAA will backdate pay from April 2019 to September 2019, to be paid next April; and backdate pay from October 2019 to March 2020 to be paid in October next year. Lees believes that even this number is a thumbsuck, and laments the fact that there simply are no credible numbers out there, as SAA’s financials are outstanding for two years running now.

The language used by labour, especially Numsa, in their public statements on the impasse contains more calls to get rid of SAA’s board than it does about working conditions. It is the posture of angry enemies rather than colleagues on different sides of a picket line. The airline’s management has reiterated that the strike endangers the future of the airline and threatens more jobs than the 944 management proposes to cut in a bid to save the airline. “We have made repeated overtures to the unions to acknowledge the severity of the situation in which we find ourselves and to work hand in hand with us to try and avert a worsening situation,” said acting chief executive Zuks Ramasia on Wednesday afternoon.

The disgruntled unions say management’s recently implemented increase for pilots has added about R100-million to the ailing national carrier’s R6.1-billion wage bill, and that their rejected demands would have only added just less than R60-million.

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