Despite having assurances that South African Airways (SAA) would soon receive the much-needed US$133 million cash injection to keep it afloat, workers at the airline are jittery about the prospects of retrenchments still loom among the workers at the airline, a union official said on Tuesday.
National Transport Movement’s Mashudu Raphetha said this in reaction to reports of the grounding of the 19 domestic and international SAA flights on Tuesday.
Even though the cash-strapped airline was placed under voluntary business rescue last month, there are concerns that government might not be able to provide the funding to get the airline back on its wings following the missing of its funding deadline on Sunday.
Raphetha said while the airline’s workers had now been given assurances that the funding would be made at the end of this week, “it is clear that retrenchments remain inevitable.”
“We are going to make sure that we salvage every job that can be affected. But something that is inevitable is job losses,” Raphetha said.
He said the union has told “business rescue practitioners” that they need to look at releasing people from the airline, especially those that are close to retirement.
“They should provide the volunteer severance packages, and take care of those who want to leave so that they can have a thinner SAA — and then we will take it from there.”
“SAA is going to survive but it’s going to be in a different shape. It cannot be as big as it was,” Raphetha concluded.
NM/jn/APA