Normal SAA services resume as strikers vow to eliminate graft

While fighting the national carrier for a raise for workers the past week, the unions involved in the strike at SAA said they were determined to eliminate corruption and prevent privatisation of the airline.

The unions said they could save South African Airways from privatisation by rooting out corruption, shortly after yesterday’s announcement that government would step in to prevent an indefinite strike.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) and South African Cabin Crew Association (Sacca) announced they were part of an SAA task team set up to clean up the parastatal and save money, which would contribute to the 2.1% wage increment they have been promised, after initially asking for 8%.

The unions said government had offered to pay the remaining 5.9% wage increment back pay from April this year in February next year.

Numsa spokesperson Phakamile Hlubi-Majola said the task team would pursue criminal investigations with SAA’s risk and compliance department headed by advocate Vusi Pikoli against executives and board members implicated in fraud.

Regarding officials who had allegedly tampered with the entity’s procurement policies in awarding tenders, she said the task team would take the findings of internal investigations to external prosecuting offices.

“We are adamant this entity will be cleaned up. They can kiss those evergreen contracts goodbye. We will save the entity millions of rands through cancellation of unlawful tenders and we will save jobs,” said Hlubi-Majola.

She said their recommendations for unnecessary contracts to be cancelled during negotiations had already saved the entity R82 million.

The workers cheered at the announcement that SAA would put retrenchments on hold.

Numsa was optimistic retrenchments could be avoided through a layoff training scheme.

Sacca and Numsa said SAA also agreed to give education benefits worth R20,000 to workers earning less than R600,000 per annum.

Unions warned that SAA must keep to their end of the bargain or face another industrial strike next year.

Workers were mandated to return to their duties with immediate effect, marking an end to the eight-day strike.

Meanwhile, striking SAA Technical workers were optimistic they would be able to get the same agreement.

SAA said the resumption of all services on all three of its networks, domestic, regional (points on the African continent) and international, were expected tomorrow.

“On behalf of SAA, I would like to express our deep regret at the inconvenience caused to our loyal customers during this industrial dispute.

“We will continue to assist those passengers who have still not been able to to reach their intended destinations,” said SAA chief commercial officer Philip Saunders.

– news@citizen.co.za

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