This news aggregator site highlights South African labour news from a wide range of internet and print sources. Each posting has a synopsis of the source article, together with a link or reference to the original. Postings cover the range of labour related matters from industrial relations to generalist human resources.
The Citizen reports that the ongoing row between striking pilots at SA Airways (SAA) and the government has degenerated into racial slurs.
Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) director-general Kgathatso Tlhakudi has claimed that an agreement between the parties was “worse than any job reservation Act of the apartheid era” and it “completely violates a democratic order”. In a scathing attack on the SA Airways Pilots Association (Saapa) in an opinion piece, Tlhakudi said the association’s defence of the “evergreen” agreement, called the regulating agreement, promoted white pilots’ self-interests. Saapa members are engaged in an ongoing dispute with SAA, the business rescue practitioners and the DPE over several pay issues and retrenchment conditions. The regulating agreement was ratified in 2014 by SAA chief executive Monwabisi Kalawe and the chair at that time, Dudu Myeni. Nowhere in the document does it refer to race, background or colour. Saapa’s Grant Back reacted: “Apartheid was a vicious and inhumane system. The director-general’s claims that the pilots of SAA seek to perpetuate any form or benefit from this stain on our country’s past is rejected with contempt.” In his piece, Tlhakudi listed some of the controversial benefits agreed to by the SAA management, including accommodation in hotels with a minimum four-star rating. Saapa represents 89% of the SAA pilot body. In its notice of strike, the pilot body demanded retrenchment for all its members and the ending of the regulating agreement amongst other demands. “The retrenchment must be fair, it must be lawful, and SAA must pay what it owes by law to its pilot employees,” said Back.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Hein Kaiser at The Citizen
- Read too, SAA BRPs present ‘final’ settlement agreement to pilots, at Moneyweb
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page