NUMSA says SAA ignored red flags
South African Airways (SAA) workers say the public carrier has itself to blame for the mess it's in.
Workers are relieved that they don't have to go through with a voluntary retrenchment process - just yet.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and the SA Cabin Crew Association challenged the plan at the Labour Court on Thursday.
Judgement was reserved in the matter.
The embattled airline's business rescue practitioners say the unions are delaying a process that needs to happen.
But NUMSA's Phakamile Hlubi-Majola says a number of bad decisions have led to this moment.
"The routes that they cancelled included KZN - a very popular route, which made the airline a lot of money.
"What's very tragically ironic is that it is the cancellation of this route, that they say is the reason they are embarking on this process, which we find to be quite shocking because we were in that meeting when they made that announcement.
"We warned them as labour that this was a disastrous decision and that it would speed up the collapse of the airline. They ignored us."
