Today's Labour News

Saturday Citizen reports that the SA Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC’s) managers and supervisors far outnumber “general” workers and that is one of the reasons that the average salary at the public broadcaster is almost R800,000 a year.  

The corporation’s 2020 annual report reveals that its wage bill was R2.357 billion, which went on a total staff complement of 2,979 people.  This meant that the average cost-to-company of each employee was R791,000 a year, or R66,000 a month.  At 2,550, top management and senior management who form the executive, together with middle and junior managements and supervisors, constituted 85% of the SABC’s total workforce of 2,979.  By contrast, ‘general employees’ comprised just 15%, or 429.  With so many managers running the corporation, the SABC must have been one of the most intensively managed organisations in the country last year because there was an average of six managers for every employee.  But middle managers, junior managers and supervisors rejected any suggestion that they earned huge salaries as indicated in the annual report.  Those were mainly national and regional editors and executive producers who did not regard themselves as part of the senior management but supervisors, who were also affected by pending retrenchments.  “It is incorrect to lump up all salaries together and taking the average because that does not reflect the true picture of the situation,” argued one employee.  They argued that the highest amount in respect of personnel expenditure went to the top management and board members.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Eric Naki on page 5 of Saturday Citizen of 21 November 2020

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