by Thinus Ferreira
South Africa's struggling public broadcaster on Wednesday announced that it is starting its massive and long-gestating retrenchment process and will now cut its bloated personnel numbers by 400 people in addition to cutting back staff leave and sick leave, and possibly freezing all salary increases for a minimum of 3 years.
Despite criticism and severe pushback by trade unions like Bemawu and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) against SABC executives' plan to cut the overstaffed public broadcaster's out-of-control wage bill, the financially-distressed broadcaster says it is now ready to implement the country's so-called "Section 189" of the labour relations act.
The SABC plans to give all workers that it decides to retrench a severance package of 1 week's pay for each completed year of service.
The SABC plans to get rid of 400 workers - less than the 600 announced earlier - in an attempt to stabilise its wage bill that remains its single biggest and untenable expense at the broadcaster that is once again on track to record a loss-making financial year thanks to a battering because of the Covid-19 pandemic despite yet another government bail-out this year of billions of rand.
The SABC says that it simply must reduce its workforce and that "sadly, our organisation requires a difficult but necessary restructuring process that will result in the reduction of staff" in order to ensure its survival.
The broadcaster says that it had conducted 16 "consultative sessions over 4 months with multiple stakeholders" - mainly the Bemawu and CWU trade unions and "considered all options to minimise the total number of affected employees".
"We have been able to reduce the total number of impacted people to approximately 400, which is significantly less than the oroginal projected figure of 600. In addition there are approximately 170 vacant positions that will be available for employees to apply for which provides the potential of further reducing the number of affected employees to 230."
The SABC plans to implement and says it will consider other dramatic cost-cutting alternatives like freezing salary increases for a minimum of 3 years, reducing employee leave days from 35 to 28 days, ending the encashment of leave days, and reducing sick leave from 30 days per year to 36 days over 3 years.
"While this decision was not an easy one, it is regrettably a necessary one for the long-term sustainability of the SABC," says Madoda Mxakwe, SABC CEO.
"An insolvent SABC serves no-one - not our employees or our citizens who rely on the SABC for transparent, fair and ethical public broadcasting services."
"This retrenchment is understandably very challenging for all our stakeholders. However, it is one part of our approved turnaround plan that will help to reposition the SABC to achieve financial sustainability."
Madoda Mxakwe says that "Addressing the SABC's huge cost base,
together with recently announced new revenue deals, will ensure that the public
broadcaster is able to properly execute its mandate to serve the people of
South Africa for decades to come".
