By Daniel Itai.
South Africa. (News of The South) – South Africa’s state owned embattled airline, South African Airways (SAA) will from tomorrow cancel all its domestic, regional and international flights, this is as a result of a strike that will be taken by most of its staff members.
SAA has offered workers a wage increase of 5.9 percent but the unions are demanding 8 percent.
The embattled airline has also issued workers with a notice of restructuring that could see 944 employees losing their jobs.
SAA said that the strike would hurt the already cash strapped airline. SAA spokesperson Tlali Tlali said, “we do not want to underestimate the impact this particular decision will have on the airline. We operate approximately 104 flights a day and when you look at the revenue that we raise, it is about R52 million (approximately US$3.4 million) per day. The strike will have a serious financial and operational impact on us.”
The South African Cabin Crew Association president, Zazi Nsibanyoni-Mugambi said, “workers have been at the forefront of trying to save SAA and make it viable. Our members have been fighting against corruption. Some were even fired for doing this.
We have held frequent marches, campaigns and pickets. We have gone to court at great expense to ourselves. We have had to defend frivolous court cases, and even opened criminal cases in an attempt to force the board and management to act in the interests of SAA and South Africa and run the airline profitably.
We are now left with no choice but to resort to this drastic course of action, by withdrawing our labour and hopping on strike.
What this means is that we will be embarking on the mother of all strikes at all SAA operations nationally, beginning on Friday morning, November 15 at 4am.”
Interim SAA chief financial officer Deon Fredericks said, passengers affected by the grounding of flights would be compensated.
The following regional and international flights will be returning back to O.R Tambo International Airport tomorrow morning:
The regional flights will be, Maputo (SA147), Lusaka (SA067), Harare (SA025), Windhoek (SA073), and Accra (SA210).
International flights will be, Frankfurt (SA261), New York (SA204), Munich (SA265), Hong Kong (SA287), Perth (SA281), Washington (SA210) and London (SA235).
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