 Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch and today we are going to be talking about the struggle by trade unions in South Africa to save the national carrier that South African Airways. Now this issue has been going on for quite some time and South African Airways had run into an economic crisis after which it went into what's called business rescue. So the government appointed business rescue practitioners to come up with a plan to revitalize the airline. Now they did come up with a plan which was put to vote among the stakeholders which included the unions, but this plan involves basically laying off a huge number of employees and the government has been claiming that the alternative to this plan is the complete liquidation of the airline. So we have with us Pagamele Kruvi Majola, the national spokesperson of the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa. This union is one of the key unions which is representing the workers of South African Airways. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much Prasanth and you've got a very very clear grasp of the situation of SAA. Thank you so to begin with we know that recently that is actually yesterday the Department of Public Enterprises which of course is a government department offered what is called a voluntary severance package to the employees of South African Airways and we do understand that this is being you know this is being almost in some ways used against the unions to sort of say that the unions are not allowing you to get this. So could you actually talk a bit about what exactly this severance package implies and also the context of what's going on now? Yes indeed as you are you are absolutely correct on Thursday the Department of Public Enterprises sent us a communique where they were basically urging all unions to adopt and agree to severance packages. In fact in their communique they claimed that already four unions had signed as a means to try and coerce other unions including NUMSA and the South African Cabin Cross Association to sign. Now first and foremost let me just explain where our problem lies with respect to the voluntary severance packages. The VSPs have been offered to workers as workers we've not actually had an opportunity to engage with DPE about the detail of the voluntary severance packages. DPE simply sent us a letter saying agree to these voluntary severance packages and if you agree and you also give a positive vote to the business rescue plan you will get these voluntary severance packages. What I can tell you right now Prasanth is that DPE has said time and time again that there's no money. So when they are offering these voluntary severance packages what are they basing it on when they've told everybody workers included that there's no money. So in other words this offer is meaningless because there's no money they haven't raised the capital for these VSPs and secondly the VSP is conditional upon there being a positive vote for the business rescue plan. So not only is there no money to back up what they are demanding from us but there's for you to get it all creditors have to agree to the business rescue plan that is currently on the table. So for the department to send these letters out to sort of claim that other unions have agreed they are not really being very honest if I'm if I'm being blunt with you because they know very well that there's no money. Secondly the unions that they say have signed are unions that are not even recognized at SAA and thirdly and most importantly it does seem to us that we are being blackmailed into agreeing to the business rescue plan in order for workers to access the voluntary severance packages. So perhaps your question might be now Noomsa and Saka why won't you accept or vote for a business rescue plan because if we don't vote for a business rescue plan the airline faces liquidation. We want to make it very clear that as Noomsa and Noomsa has been working together with the SA Cabin Crew Association on this everything we have done has been to try and prevent liquidation of the airline. However the business rescue plan is a flawed plan it's a defective plan we know this because the department of public enterprises itself said that the plan is not good enough the department also said they do not trust the business rescue practitioners there's been a complete breakdown in trust they they they feel that they've completely failed in their mandate they said this at the time when the business plan was business rescue plan was published so then how do they now try and force us as unions to accept a defective plan they themselves are admitting that the plan is not good enough and this is what makes us extremely suspicious especially because that business rescue plan is based on 3,700 workers losing their jobs at South African Airways it's a business rescue plan where only a thousand staff are retained and those 3,700 workers who lose their jobs get what it is in our view a very small voluntary severance package which does not and will not cover them for the many many months of unemployment that they will have to endure because of the crisis in aviation all we are asking for as Noomsa and Saka is an opportunity to sit with the department so that we can improve and amend the plan so that all creditors can vote for a plan because as things stand now if you look at what happened at the creditors vote last week 69% of the creditors would not back the plan if we had not put an alternative on the table to say let's rather defer this vote to another date so that we can amend the plan it is very likely that those creditors would have voted against the plan and if they have voted if they had rejected the plan then yes indeed we would right now be facing liquidation so one of the key questions to do a bit more of context one of the key questions would be that why is the airline in such a bad shape in the first place of course it's a national airline it is backed in some senses by the government so how did it how did this situation come to pass that such a prestigious carrier is in such a bad shape well we're talking about years and years and years of mismanagement on the side of the South African Airways executive years of looting and corruption by them executive management and and and and whilst this was happening the board of SAA did nothing there were several forensic reports nine in total which were released at different times in the last five years basically giving great detail about how South African Airways is being looted through the procurement expenditure and there was no intervention from the board there was no intervention from the South African Airways executors unions namely Numsansaka were very vocal about this type of corruption not only did we write to the presidency we opened cases at police stations we took the cases to the public protector we took matters to court as we speak right now there's an outstanding matter at the South Khadeng High Court where we want the court to declare the board delinquent because of the fact that they failed in their duties in their oversight duties to intervene in this kind of rampant looting and corruption the the value of of SAA's procurement expenditure every year is 25 billion a year by far that amount is much more than what the cost of labor is to the airline and when you look at the business rescue plan which has been devised to save the airline it doesn't deal with this problem at all it's a plan that is based purely only on retrenchment of workers it does not look at how the bloated procurement spend has collapsed the airline it does not deal with expensive lease costs costly fuel costs all of those things which needed to be renegotiated as per the forensic reports so if the department of public enterprises wants us to agree to this plan then they are basically saying that they want to redo the last five years this so-called new SAA will fail it will fail because it is repeating the mistakes of the past it is a it will be an SAA with the same board which was responsible for corruption with the same executive management and worse it will be an SAA where the type of looting which collapsed the airline in the first place continues through this new structure and to continue a bit on the same issue the unions had proposed a very drastically different solution they said that rather than laying off workers en masse like the business rescue practitioners are proposing the contract should actually be ensourced so could you talk a bit about that idea so there's various things that we proposed in our plan which we had hoped would find expression in the final business rescue plan we had said that we accept the fact that it is possible it is likely that the airline will start only with smaller numbers okay but there is an expectation that within the next 18 months or so those numbers will increase because the activity in aviation will also increase so what we said was even if you do start with a number of a thousand workers ramping up say to about 2900 or 3200 which is what we envisioned envisaged for those workers who are not immediately employed instead of them being retrenched put them on what we call a training layoff scheme it's a scheme which is supported by the CETA the CETA is being the it's SETA I just forgot what it stands for but basically it's the skills development authority in South Africa and what it means is that workers salaries will be paid for by the CETA because workers will not be working full-time they'll be training full-time so those who are not able to be absorbed immediately will then go into training and that training obviously will be the type of training which will suit the airline and and then they'll be training until that the possibility becomes available for them to get absorbed as the airline ramps up that way we are not adding to the burden of unemployment which I'm sure you know you've seen our statistics which at the moment is extremely high and it means that workers and their families are at least catered for during this transitional period that was the first thing secondly we said that the business rescue plan must be looking at insourcing contracts those contracts that can be insourced where the work can be done by SAA within itself must then be taken over those contracts which are bloated must be renegotiated we know that what COVID-19 has actually done is it's actually created an opportunity where this can happen a lot of renegotiation of major contracts whether it's for fuel whether it's for leasing can take place a lot of airlines are doing this because of the fact that aviation has really been affected severely by the virus so a lot of airline companies are taking advantage of that to renegotiate costs and this is exactly what should happen right now thirdly we've said that one of the things that we should be looking at is the fact that there are ways that we can ensure that we must take off right now so the business rescue plan is talking about SAA taking off next year that for us is deeply problematic there are many airlines which are currently operating and if SAA only takes off next year then you are basically dooming it before it can fully function it's all of its networks all of its routes will then be taken over by competitors already global airlines are wanting to take over some of the routes that SAA had had been dominating before so it is in the best interest of this airline to begin operations now so that it can start to strengthen itself it can it mustn't lose the competitive edge and allow competitors to take over as we speak airline which is one of SAA's competitors in the region is went and applied for SAA to be placed under liquidation they are they actually happen to be one of the creditors and as Noomsa and Saka we went to court to oppose this because our values do not align with A-Link we do not want A-Link to capitalise off SAA's distress at the moment so if SAA was to take over right now we would then know for a fact that we're giving this airline a genuine opportunity in order for it to be successful in the long term absolutely and finally so I understand that the next vote on the plan is on July 14th like you mentioned that there has been it was deferred following the intervention of the unions so in the coming days are are you looking at negotiating with the department of public enterprises to make sure that some of these clauses do get added to the plan and the plan is substantially amended as we speak to you as I speak to you we are actually engaging with the department of public enterprises it is an it is not in anyone's interest for us to go into that vote without having secured an amendment to the business rescue plan if we do not change that plan right now very likely we are going to face liquidation we do not think that we are asking for too much we are not trying to collapse the state under a burden of expenses here our goal has always been the long-term sustainability of the airline if DPE shares that goal they will work with us on this initiative um we have been very flexible on the issue of numbers we're not married to the idea of us having 3200 staff we accept that they are likely to be job losses because of the fact that the tourism sector has really been hard hit by coronavirus and no one can predict when it will properly be fully at its peak like it was you know so we we have to be realistic and we accept that but at the same time what we will not accept is for government to pull the wool over everybody's eyes and pretend that they're trying to save the airline when they are not taking the right steps which will guarantee the long-term sustainability of the airline thank you so much for actually talking to us thank you that's all we have time for today keep watching people's and you