Labour Court orders halt in SAA retrenchment process

The Labour Court has ordered SA Airways business rescue practitioners to cease its retrenchment process and first produce a proper business rescue plan, after both the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (Numsa) and the SA Cabin Crew Association (Sacca) took practitioners to court crying foul over the retrenchment plans.

Unions and government are at loggerheads on the future of the airline, EWN reports. This after the Labour Court, on Friday, found that the proposed retrenchment at the airline was procedurally unfair.

As a result, the court instructed SAA and its business rescue practitioners (BRP) to withdraw their notice of retrenchment.

Numsa and Sacca challenged the retrenchment process initiated by the BRP in March. The BRP had earlier announced that in order to make appropriate decisions on what the Labour Court had previously ruled, they had extended the deadlines for unions and employees to sign the proposed voluntary termination of employment agreement.

“Our application is based on the fact that the business rescue practitioners (BRP) have failed to deliver on a business rescue (BR) plan, and therefore the section 189 retrenchment process which was started in March is unlawful in the absence of a BR plan,” the unions said in a statement on Thursday.

The unions said in their application they were seeking the following remedies:

1. That it be declared that the BRP’s issuing of Section 189/189A notices on 9 and 19 March 2020, was unlawful, given that they have not presented a business rescue plan as contemplated in Section 150 of the Companies Act.

2. Alternatively declaring the BRP’s issuing of section 189/A notices to workers and their continuation with the consultative process in the absence of a BR plan as unfair.

3. Directing the BRP to withdraw the relevant Section 189/189A notices, or alternatively, directing them to suspend the consultative process until the applicants have been presented with a draft business rescue plan.

4. Assigned to the relief is that the BRP be directed that they may not issue retrenchment notices / letters of dismissal, because the processing of applications for severance packages were secured through an unlawful section 189 process.

5. “We also seek the protection of the condition of services, in other words, we seek the right to be considered on the government-sponsored Training Lay-Off scheme, instead of being retrenched in terms of the collective agreement.”

(Compiled by Gopolang Moloko)

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