Statement on SAA in support of workers and turnaround to emerge with a viable and growing national airline  

26 April 2020

The South African Communist Party has noted and welcomes the intervention announced in a statement on Saturday, 25 April 2020 by the Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan on the situation of the South African Airways (SAA). ‘We advise that the Department agreed with the Business Rescue Practitioners on a moratorium on the signing of the retrenchment agreements until Friday 1 May 2020. As a result, the employees are not obliged to sign the collective agreement for the retrenchments for the period of the moratorium’, said Minister Gordhan in the statement.

The SACP pledges its profound solidarity with the workers and calls for a further extension of the 1 May 2020 deadline and a real rescue of SAA and the whole of the state airline sector. The business rescue practitioners were appointed in December 2019 to turn SAA around. Nevertheless, until now, four months later, the business rescue practitioners have not produced a turnaround or business rescue plan and have neither rescued SAA nor turned the national airline around. Yet a lot of money has been spent towards their ‘business rescue’ fees, including the funds they most probably spent towards consultants and other people or companies that they brought into the process. There has to be accountability on value for money and therefore every cent spent towards their ‘business rescue’ process vis-à-vis its diametrically opposed outcomes – as things stand at the moment.  

It will be unprecedented and self-contradictory with far reaching implications for the state to allow workers to be retrenched as part of the first steps adopted at a state-owned entity in the midst of the novel coronavirus disaster and a high rate of unemployment directly impacting a population of approximately 10.4 million active and discouraged work seekers. The SACP reiterates its call for greater and more robust state intervention to protect the affected workers and ensure that the SAA business rescue process produces a viable and growing national airline, as opposed to the liquidation of state participation in the aviation industry.

The SACP reiterates its call for a whole-of-state approach that brings together all ministries and state organisations involved in the aviation sector. Through the whole-of-state approach government should ensure strategic decision-making and communication coherence guided by common objectives. An aviation industrial policy in which state participation through a national airline plays a key role should be produced as a national imperative.

The SACP calls upon progressive unions at SAA, including SA Technical, Air Chefs and Voyager, as well as at SA Express and Mango, to unite and work together in pursuit of the common interests and aspirations of the workers. The SACP will continue to both express its views publicly and engage within the framework of the Alliance as well as with other stakeholders in the interest of securing success on our common objectives regarding a viable and growing state airline sector.

Issued by Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo, Central Committee Member: Head of Media & Communications, 26 April 2020