SAA fails to increase employees wage as promised

South African Airways has confirmed that it will not be able to pay employees a wage rise of 5.9%. This happens after employees went on a week-long pay strike.

According to Business Live, the increases were supposed to be paid to employees in February 2020 payroll and backdated to April 2019, subject to availability of funds.

During the employees strike last week, the Union representatives as well as the South African government had several meetings to agree on a certain percentage. It was in the end agreed that employees should get 5.9% wage increase.

On other reports in a joint statement, it is said that the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and the SA Cabin Crew Association (Sacca), demanded 8% across-the-board wage increase.

“SAA is living on bailouts so it cannot afford the increase, let alone an increase above CPI (consumer price index),” said Leitch. He added that instead of continuing to bail out SAA, the state should be using the funds to provide services to the poor.

Although the employees are demanding wage rise, SAA has reported that it has lost more than R18bn since the 2015 financial year.