Press Statement dated 5 November 2018
On Monday the Federation of Unions of South Africa (FEDUSA) General Secretary Dennis George was invited and participated in a high level meeting on the future of the South African Airways (SAA) the troubled national carrier in Johannesburg led by Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan. The Airline Pilots Association of South Africa (ALPA-SA), one the biggest trade unions at SAA is affiliated to FEDUSA. UASA – the Union – another affiliate of FEDUSA also got members at the national airline.
Minister Gordhan wants SAA Board of Directors and management to immediately implement the airline’s turn-around strategy that has already gone through at least three different iterations in recent years under different Chief Executive Officers without being able to pull it out of total dependency on state bailouts and government guarantees.
It is estimated that National Treasury has already sunk close to R19 billion over the past 15 years in the bottomless black-hole that is SAA’s balance sheet. In his maiden Medium Term Budget Policy Statement last month Finance Minister Tito Mboweni injected a further R5 billion bailout into SAA to signal government’s seriousness in wanting to see the national carrier restored to commercial and operational viability.
FEDUSA also welcomes the media statement released by the department of public enterprises at the weekend which noted that choices made in the past by previous Boards and management not only lacked imagination but also entrenched corruption and hobbled the commercial viability of the airline; and that the immediate priority going forward would be to “stabilize SAA financially and through a rigorous process of cost reduction and commercial reorientation, and turn into an airline that was financially and operationally sustainable”.
However FEDUSA is adamant that SAA should not resort to retrenchments and target workers’ jobs as an easy way out of a commercial and operational mess that was created by governance failure and corruption.
Issued by Frank Nxumalo, Media and Research Officer, Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa)