The high court in Pretoria will on Tuesday hear an urgent application by transport workers’ union Satawu for an order compelling business rescue practitioner Thomas Hendrick Samons to pay its members’ salaries and other benefits, which have not been paid for the past six months.
This also included pension fund contributions.
The SA Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu), an affiliate of trade union federation Cosatu, wants the business rescue practitioner to pay its members who are employees of the Northwest Transport Investments (NTI) their outstanding wages, and medical aid and Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) contributions, among other things, from February to August.
NTI is an entity of the North West provincial government which owns and runs the North West Star bus company (NWS) and Atteridgeville Bus Services (ABS), which employs more than 1,000 employees and transports thousands of commuters daily between the North West and Gauteng.
NTI, NWS and ABS are in business rescue, with Samons appointed in 2022 by the provincial government to turn around the company’s fortunes.
The nonpayment of salaries and employment benefits had taken a heavy toll on the workers, with some having lost their homes and cars, said Satawu’s legal representative, Dhevan Ramiah.
In Satawu’s heads of argument, counsel Muhammed Coovadia argued this was not the first time the nonpayment had happened.
‘Life and death’
“The problem of the nonpayment of salaries and other employment-related benefits is ongoing and the present application seeks an urgent solution to the problem,” Coovadia said. “This case is fundamentally urgent because it is now a matter of life and death.”
Coovadia said that since the commencement of the business rescue, Satawu members who were employed by NTI, NWS and ABS and who had since retired, “have not received their pension payouts”.
“The employees are experiencing extreme suffering, in that they do not have food to eat because they cannot afford to buy basic groceries like bread and milk. The employees have to take loans from friends, family members and loan sharks to meet basic needs and necessities to survive and thereby incurring substantial debts.
“Employees have already had judgments taken against them by credit providers and their cars and homes repossessed,” Coovadia said.
He said NTI had received more than R260m in revenue from January to May 2024.
In his affidavit, Satawu general secretary Jack Mazibuko said union members who were employees of NTI, NWS and ABS had not received any medical aid contributions, pension fund contributions, salaries, wages, trade union subscriptions, UIF contributions and related employment benefits for the months of February 2024 to August 2024, from the business rescue practitioner.
Mazibuko said in November 2023, the business rescue practitioner received R77m from the North West department of community safety & transport management and gave an undertaking it would be used to settle outstanding salaries and wages, but this did not happen.
‘Vexatious’
In his answering affidavit, Samons said: “The companies’ financial dilemma is a function of mismanagement that preceded my appointment as the business rescue practitioner by many years.”
He said that while Satawu was a registered trade union, “it is not the representative trade union in the workplace. During February 2024, I was approached by the SA Workers Union [Sawu], who presented me with the following documents [revealing that hundreds of] ... employees had indeed terminated their membership with the applicant.”
Samons said Satawu’s application was “as presented and prosecuted, an abuse of process and vexatious.
“The applicant is invited to withdraw the application and tender the respondents’ costs.”
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