City Press reports that employees of SAA, who have not been paid for eight months, may receive their salaries for three months this week if trade unions accept a new proposal made by Solidarity.  

However, if the unions agree this does not mean the employees will be forfeiting the other five months’ salaries, says the union’s Derek Mans.  “It does not serve as a final settlement and outstanding payments will be postponed until the business rescue process is completed,” he pointed out.  According to Mans, the Department of Public Enterprises as well as two unions – the Aviation Union of SA and the National Transport Movement – have agreed to Solidarity’s proposal.  It is now up to the department to submit the agreement to the business rescuers.  The staff of SAA Technical, who currently receive only a quarter of their salaries each month, are excluded from the proposal.  The department tried to resolve the salary payments matter last week by offering SAA workers three months’ outstanding salary, but then they would forfeit the other five months.  The idea was that R600 million would go to the staff and the balance would still be spent to help the SAA subsidiaries.  However, there was doubt whether the business rescue practitioners were legally entitled to pay the money to the subsidiaries even in those circumstances.  According to Mans, Solidarity’s proposal meant the SAA staff would at least have something in their pockets and could still keep their claims open for the balance. But time will tell if the other unions will accept this.  In a sharply-worded statement, the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) said Gordhan was “playing games with the workers’ bread and butter”.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Antoinette Slabbert at City Press (paywall access only)

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