Johannesburg - Striking unions threatened
to shut down South Africa's entire aviation industry on Sunday
by extending industrial action beyond state-run South African
Airways.
SAA has cancelled hundreds of flights since the strike began
on Friday, saying the stoppage is costing R50 million per day and jeopardising talks with lenders around
much-needed funding, threatening its survival.
The carrier and unions representing over half of its
workforce held negotiations on Saturday that ended without an
agreement. By Sunday, both sides were trading threats.
Phakamile Hlubi-Majola, spokeswoman for the National Union
of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) which called the strike
alongside the South African Cabin Crew Association, told
journalists it was now consulting with its members at other
organisations in the industry on a secondary strike.
"This secondary strike will have the impact of shutting down
the entire aviation sector," she said. Consultations were
underway with workers at SAA subsidiaries like Mango Airlines,
other airlines like Comair and organisations like the
Civil Aviation Authority and Airports Company South Africa.
She also said Numsa had filed an application with the High
Court to have the board of SAA Technical, a unit of SAA that
provides aircraft maintenance, declared delinquent, and said
flights SAA has restarted were unsafe.
Some of SAA's international flights have resumed though
local and regional flights remain grounded.
SAA's acting CEO Zuks Ramasia called on the unions to
retract statements made with regards to SAA's safety, saying
that otherwise the airline would consider taking legal action.
Ramasia told a media briefing a secondary strike would hurt
South Africa's competitiveness. "The intent of a secondary
strike is to cause disruption, bring all airports to a halt and
create huge damage to South African economy," she said.
The unions' plan could compound disruption by hitting
airlines SAA has relied on to make alternative arrangements for
its customers.
Their demands include an 8% wage increase and for outsourced
services to be bought back in-house, and they also object to
SAA's plans to axe more than 900 jobs. They say workers are
tired of taking the hit for years of management failures.
SAA, which has not made a profit since 2011 and is reliant
on government bailouts to survive, says it needs to cut costs.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has staked his reputation on turning
around a number of ailing state-run firms like SAA that the
government has been forced to prop up.
Ramasia said that SAA had been tasked by dispute resolution
body the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration,
which mediated Saturday's talks, to consider options on the way
forward with the unions.
"We are considering the options that were provided to us,"
she said, adding SAA will then revert back to the CCMA, whose
commissioners will reconvene talks between the parties.