The South African Airways (SAA), the state owned beleaguered aviation company, is about to cut more than 900 jobs as a part of its restructuring process to get over the financial distress the company is going through. As a prelude to this, the airline has started parleys with the staff numbering over 5000 and trade unions. The airline has been in red since 2011 and is burdened with ageing fleet. Though the airline company is putting up a posture that no decision would be taken without getting the consent of the employees, it is reliably leant that the axe will befall on 944 employees, who have been identified.
The cash strapped airline is also looking for suitors to take stake in the airline. But so far, the efforts were not successful. A decade back or so, SAA smarted as the largest and best airline in Africa. The bidders are shying away because of the debt and large number of workers on its rolls.
In the meantime, a union claiming to be the majority representative of staff at SAA said it would not allow the management to shed the jobs and dubbed the airline’s retrenchment notice an attempt to scare its members. They questioned the rationale of increasing the salaries of pilots and other senior staff and at the same time retrenching the junior staff, who would not be able to find alternative jobs in the given depressed situation that the country is going through. SAA received a budgetary allocation of R9.2 billion last month to help it settle debts, which could not be rolled over.
