The South African Cabin Crew Association (SACCA) has warned that the low-cost carrier airline FlySafair will have itself to blame should the ongoing protracted wage negotiation deadlock continue.
SACCA is the majority union, accounting for 62% of the 800 workers at the country’s largest domestic airline.
Speaking on YOUFM Newshour, SACCA President Advocate Christopher Shabangu said that the union has not embarked on a strike yet, nor does it wish to go on strike amid an ongoing wage dispute with the employer.
“We are not picketing, we are not on strike, but our members have been locked out by the employer. Let me clarify that because most of the people don’t understand. If we reach a deadlock as workers, we have a right to strike, and the employer has a right to lock you out and in this instance the employer has locked out our members,” explained Shabangu.
The union said it has revised down its initial demand of 15%, accepting the four-year offer of 6% in the first year and 6,9% in the fourth year as proposed by the employer.
“FlySafair gave us an offer, which we took to our members for 6% for the first year, 6.5% for the second year, 6.7% and 6.9 for the fourth year. It also had R600 meal allowance and had 7% of your annual bonuses and sign on bonus. Our members rejected the offer and as union officials said we cannot take our member on strike because we did not believe there’s going to be any significant improvement on the offer, we therefore advised them to accept the offer as is,” said the association president.
SACCA said that it has already accepted the offer, without certain clauses that were not negotiated which led to stalemate.
“When we went to sign the offer at FlySafair on Monday, on arrival, we discovered that they had included clauses that had not been negotiated with us, one of which includes a lunch-hour sacrifice,” said Shabangu.
The president has confirmed that the union will be meeting with the airline management again on Thursday.
“We hope that they will come with an honest offer and we are ready to sign even tomorrow if they just abide by the workers rules and not include things that were not negotiated in the agreement,
But I must reaffirm that the cabin crew workers are not on strike but just locked out by the company. All this is happening, FlySafair is inflicting it upon itself,” remarked Shabangu.
Meanwhile, the union said that it cannot rule out the possibility of going on strike should the employer continue to disregard the existing agreement.
“First, it is worrying because FlySafair already is the one that is inflicting this problem upon itself.
Secondly, we have expressly told them that we are aware of what is happening, we are aware of the festive season, we are aware of the G20 Summit in the next 17-days, and we don’t want to disturb those events and will gladly accept the offer.
But if we do not agree we will be left with no option but to shut everything down and that is definitely going to affect the whole country, which is not what we want,” warned Shabangu.
