Fin24 reports that the SAA Pilots' Association (Saapa) wants to know why – unlike other employees at state-owned SA Airways (SAA) – their 13th cheques for 2019 have not yet been paid from the R1.5 billion in funding that the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) made available to the business rescue practitioners (BRPs) in December.  

Saapa is adamant that the 2019 13th cheques due to its members are payable regardless of the union having been placed in lockout.  Members of Saapa have been locked out since 18 December 2020 by the BRPs, who want Saapa to agree to cancel their current regulating agreement and accept new terms of employment.  A lockout means an employer is not obliged to pay salaries from the date of the lockout.  The BRPs stopped paying SAA employees their salaries in May, claiming they had no more money to do so.  Unlike other unions represented at SAA, Saapa (and also the National Union of Metalworkers of SA and the SA Cabin Crew Association) has not yet signed an offer of three months' salaries as full and final settlement of backpay.  Saapa chair captain Grant Back stated:  "We are in a dramatically different position to Numsa and Sacca and all other employees in that we have been locked out, while those employees are all still accruing unpaid salaries as the rescue process drags on. All other employees had been allowed to take up the salary settlement and have been paid their 2020 13th cheques where Saapa members have not even been paid their 2019 13th cheques. These cheques are not bonuses but are guaranteed as part of the employees' total cost of employment."  According to Back, some pilots resigned from Saapa recently in desperation in order to try and secure payment of the salary settlement amount.  He claimed that those who then signed the DPE’s three-month backpay offer have not received that payment nor their 2019 13th cheques.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Carin Smith at Fin24

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