Comair aircraft kulula.com and British Airways. Picture: Supplied: Meropa Communications
The strike that saw Comair workers downing tools on Thursday afternoon has been interdicted pending a court verdict.
The judge will only be able to rule on the matter on Tuesday, meaning the workers who started striking at 1pm on Thursday will have to head back to work for now.
This means that the company’s services should function normally over Easter, something the company had said they would do their best to ensure, strike or no strike.
Comair had said it was working flat out to avoid or mitigate the impact of the possible strike by airport ground staff and had put in place contingencies to continue daily operations should the industrial action happen.
The airline said employees from across the business had volunteered to assist at airports over Easter. It said it had also proactively called as many customers as possible 72 hours before departure to facilitate check-in and was providing additional bag-drop counters.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) earlier vowed to defend its right to strike at Comair and challenge the airline’s attempt to interdict its planned job boycott at the Labour Court on Thursday morning.
Numsa served the domestic airline with a 48-hour notice to strike on Tuesday over a wage dispute.
However, Comair, which operates as a low-cost carrier under its own kulula.com brand as well as operating domestic routes as a British Airways franchisee, approached the Labour Court to interdict the strike which it says is illegal. The matter was set for 10am.
The dispute relates to salary anomalies for 21 employees hired prior to 2009 who are being paid higher than the agreed salary scale. Numsa represents just over 50 percent of Comair’s 700 airport ground staff out of a total staff complement of 2,200.
In a statement, the union said Comair wanted to interdict the strike because it was worried it would have a major impact on its operations and profits during the busy Easter weekend.
Numsa slammed Comair for saying workers who participated in pickets during the strike would be arrested despite picketing rules established by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), together with the Airports Company of SA at all airports.
“The CCMA has requested to mediate the strike on Thursday in an attempt to resolve the impasse. We welcome the intervention and we have agreed that we will be meeting them tomorrow afternoon,” the union said.
“We will do everything in our power to prevent the interdict and we call on the management of Comair to engage meaningfully with our demands.”
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