The South African Communist Party is outraged by media reports that South African Airways is planning to retrench close to 1000 workers by December 2007.
The SACP has a number of concerns about these planned retrenchments. Firstly this runs directly counter to the government’s commitment to half unemployment by 2014. Secondly, we would have expected that all state owned enterprises would do all to contribute to this achievement. Third, we are concerned about the practice of first announcing plans to retrench workers and only after that seek to engage unions. This is a bad labour relations practice, and should be strongly condemned.
It also cannot be that senior management continue to be rewarded millions of rands in bonuses and perks, including travel packages, whilst workers are expected to sacrifice their jobs and livelihoods. For a parastatal the first that should be explored is how to cut back on these luxurious remuneration packages and perks, even before considering retrenching. This demonstrates the fact that state owned enterprises are practically no different to private capitalist entities. Of even more serious concern is that workers, especially black workers, are still treated as dispensable entities with no right to quality jobs.
We call on the Minister of Public Enterprises to urgently intervene in this matter and ensure that we save workers’ jobs, if this is to be the age of hope not only for the elite but for the workers and the poor as well.
We will engage SATAWU and various other stakeholders, and the SACP pledges its full support to whatever action that SATAWU and COSATU might take to fight this issue.
Issued by the SACP.
CONTACT:
Malesela Maleka
SACP Spokesperson
Tel: 011 339 3621
Fax: 011 339 4244
Cell: 082 226 1802
Email: Malesela@sacp.org.za