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Pravin Gordhan tells SAA strikers there is no more money to meet 8% pay demand

Details

saa thumb medium95 76BL Premium reports that public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan has told striking unions at the cash-strapped national carrier South African Airways (SAA) that there is no money to meet their demand for an 8% across-the-board pay increase.  

Gordhan met with the leadership of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and the SA Cabin Crew Association (Sacca) in Pretoria on Tuesday.  The meeting was requested by the unions, which have embarked on open-ended industrial action after rejecting SAA’s pay offer of 5.9% deferred to April 2020.  Gordhan indicated that over the last three years, the government had provided more than R20.5bn in fiscal support to SAA and said everybody needed to make sacrifices to save the airline and jobs.  A restructuring of SAA’s business was required to return the airline to profitability, Gordhan stated.  But, the unions contend it is wasteful and corrupt contracts that are responsible for the poor state of the airline.  Gordhan said that management was tackling that issue.  Meantime, SAA acting CEO Zuks Ramasia said the airline would be approaching the Labour Court urgently in an effort to interdict additional demands made by the unions relating to insourcing of various services rendered to the aviation industry and restructuring of the organisation.  A Numsa spokesperson denied that there were additional demands and commented:  "We will defend the strike.  It is legal, and we reject their allegations."

  • Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Luyolo Mkentane at BusinessLive
  • Read too, SAA warns it could be put out of business if strike continues much longer, at Business Report
  • And also, Secondary airline strike could be severe blow to economy, warns industry body, at Fin24


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