CWU and MultiChoice agree to co-operate to endeavour to reduce ANN7 job losses

8 February 2018  

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) met with MultiChoice South Africa CEO, Calvo Mawela and other MultiChoice executives on Tuesday the 6th of February 2018, to discuss the Union’s concerns following the announcement that MultiChoice will not renew its contract with ANN7 at the end of August.

CWU wanted to understand the rationale for MultiChoice’s decision. The Union’s primary concern is possible job losses at ANN7 and it wanted to know what steps MultiChoice will be taking in this regard.

The outcome of the meeting was an agreement to set up a team to work on practical solutions to reduce the negative impact on the loss of jobs at ANN7 as far as possible. The parties agreed to look at how best ANN7 employees can be redeployed to the new news channel MultiChoice is commissioning, as well as within the broader industry.

The parties reiterated their support for promoting diversity of news and views on the DStv platform; and agree that this news channel will be based on this principle. The importance of media freedom and editorial independence was emphasized as a guiding principle for the new channel. MultiChoice reassured CWU that it would not interfere with the editorial policies of any news channel on their DStv platform, as it too believes in the importance of freedom of press, which is one of the fundamental key pillars of our democracy.  

“We are committed to job creation and making significant investments to grow our industry in a positive and meaningful way. That is one of the reasons why we are commissioning this new news channel. Our commitment in making a lasting impact on our industry is clear - in the past five years, we have invested more than R7 billion in the local television production industry. This has had a significant positive impact on creating long-term opportunities in our sector,” said Calvo Mawela, CEO for MultiChoice South Africa.

The Communication Workers Union said: “We welcome the outcomes of the meeting as a first step as we continue to strive for media diversity and an industry that is inclusive. As a union, we view job security as a primary objective of any trade union movement. We further call for better working conditions for journalists and all workers within the industry. We are not going to rest on our laurels, but we will work hard to make sure that workers are not victims of wrong business decisions.”

Issued by the Office of the General Secretary, CWU, 8 February 2018