CAROL PATON: Numsa’s wage demands at SAA are a side order on a bigger menu

It is already a widely held view that the strike at SAA is about more than the airline itself.

The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) has gone to war over a range of proxy issues, from the principle of privatising state assets to the ANC’s general economic policy and ideological stance. In all of this, the wage demand of the employees — for a double-inflation increase from a failing company that does not know where the money for salaries over the next few months will come from — is a side order. So is the fact, as far as Numsa is concerned, that the strike will weaken the company further and with it the security of their members’ jobs.

How will it work out? Everything depends on how the government responds. Last week, when the strike began, both public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan and President Cyril Ramaphosa were out of the country. This week will provide the first opportunity to see which way they go.

Numsa has quickly tired of meeting with SAA management and its board. In talks convened by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) on Saturday, the unions did not move from their original demands. In fact, since the strike began they have added new ones, which include no retrenchments for three years; the “insourcing” of a range of services presently performed by external service providers; and the resignation of the board.

And because it is the government that holds the purse strings and this is a strike that is over government policy, it is Gordhan and finance minister Tito Mboweni Numsa really wants to meet at the negotiating table. If Gordhan steps into the fray, like he did over Eskom’s wage negotiation in 2018, any prospect that SAA will ever become a fit-for-purpose airline run on commercial principles and therefore an attractive proposition for a buyer will be killed off immediately. So will the prospect that the government will ever get a grip on public finances and the public sector wage bill, or on the restructuring of Eskom.

So, while Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim has a lot at stake in this fight, so does the government. At risk is not just SAA’s viability but the credit rating of the country, which depends very much on the government’s ability to demonstrate its commitment to reform, particularly of state-owned enterprises, and the wage structures of those employed in the public sector.

With these stakes already very high, both sides raised them further on Saturday. SAA’s move to get international flights going again on Sunday and African flights on Tuesday has been a crucial intervention. Domestic travellers can be shuffled around to Mango and other operators, and in this way the harm to SAA customers can be limited. It also helps that the a third union —NTM — is not on strike and is on the brink of a settlement with SAA.

Numsa appealed to its members elsewhere in the sector to engage in a secondary or sympathy strike. If other airlines — or even SAA subsidiaries such as Mango or other parts of the aviation sector such as SA Civil Aviation Authority — join the strike, aviation could in theory be brought to a halt.  But practically it is not that straightforward, and not at all likely to get off the ground.

It is difficult enough to go on strike over your own wages, but to strike for someone else’s is not a compelling idea. For those who might believe in the cause articulated by Jim, seven days’ notice must first be given, so the idea that a secondary strike will put pressure on SAA is overdone.

A more real danger than a secondary strike are actual strikes at Comair and at SAA Technical (SAAT), which conducts line maintenance for almost every airline that flies in and out of airports in SA. Without line maintenance checks aircraft cannot fly.

Employees at both have strike certificates. At SAAT the terms of the strike certificate do not allow a ballot to be conducted before November 22, meaning that at the earliest a strike could only begin in a week’s time. At Comair, several days are also required to ballot and then give the required notice should that be the decision of employees.

In short, for all its war talk Numsa is not getting any reinforcements soon. With this reality, Jim must hope the soldiers he has at his disposal — mostly middle class and not used to striking — will stand firm and not waver.

He must also hope that they do not get to hear of his last great misadventure. In March he took workers out on strike at Arcelormittal to demand insourcing, only to return five weeks later with more or less nothing. A few months later the retrenchment notices arrived.

• Paton is writer-at-large.