While airline staff behind the recent eight-day strike at the national carrier say they support the business rescue at South African Airways (SAA), the South African Communist Party (SACP) says a ‘state-led turnaround process’ would be preferable.
The SACP said it was ‘disappointed that SAA was driven into a business rescue situation’.
It said its central committee would call for ‘a special resolution on SAA and other state-owned enterprises’ at the party’s Special National Congress starting today.
The resolution would be ‘aimed at securing workers’ and broader national interests and turning around the entire public interests sector of our economy’.
The party said in a statement: ‘The SACP calls upon the trade union movement, regardless of affiliation, to unite in defending SAA as a state-owned asset, as well as in protecting workers’ jobs at SAA, other state-owned entities and across the economy.’
It also recommended that all official public sector flights using tax payers’ money should be booked with SAA ‘as part of its turnaround and sustainability strategy’.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and the South African Cabin Crew Association (SACCA) said they had ‘decided to support Solidarity’s application for business rescue’ as a means of securing their ‘engagement on the turnaround strategy’.
NUMSA and SACCA insisted, however, that the turnaround could not be ‘managed and controlled by the very same board and management which is responsible for having plunged the airline into this crisis in the first place’.
It was ‘crucial that the right person and team of experts be chosen to do this work, otherwise, SAA will continue on the path of destruction’, they said.
[Picture: By Hansueli Krapf, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25575321]