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The Labor Court has fired the union, the Sindicato Nacional de Metales de SA (Numsa) to rule out Comair’s downsizing process, paving the way for the airline to continue implementing its corporate rescue plan.
Comair, which operates Kulula.com and British Airways locally, had its rescue plan adopted by creditors in September and expects the airline to resume operations in December.
The implementation of the Comair rescue plan is subject to several aspects, including entering a dismissal process with employees, the conclusion of a collective agreement with the unions agreeing a total reduction of 400 jobs and the collective agreement to agree a reduction in the number of employees in several categories approved by the investor consortium after the rescue of the airline.
In his sentencing Monday, Judge Graham Moshoana held that in the face of retrenIn this process, employers are entitled to “agree in advance with an employee or a collective of employees that, in the event that the layoff occurs for operational reasons, a specific amount of severance pay can be paid. The legal obligation of an employer is to propose compensation. ”
Comair entered into a collective bargaining agreement with Solidarity and the airline’s pilots’ association in October after issuing Section 189 notices in September. Although Numsa does not want the court to declare dismissal from the collective bargaining agreement, the union says that business rescue professionals signed the collective bargaining agreement with a minority of the airline’s employees.
The pilots association is bigger
Numsa argued that Solidarity ran a recruiting drive at the airline to ensure that it became the majority union. Employees who joined Solidarity during the hiring drive did so out of fear of downsizing or liquidating the airline, Numsa said.
Solidaridad has denied these claims, saying it was acting in the interests of its members.
At the time of the signing of the collective agreement, Solidaridad and the pilots association had a combined membership of 1,028, which is more than half the workforce compared to Numsa’s 574 members.
Based on the numbers, there can be no doubt that Solidarity and the pilots’ association are the majority union in the airline, Moshoana said. It added that the argument that Comair violated Numsa’s majority recognition agreement by allowing Solidarity to engage in a recruiting drive in order to accumulate sufficient numbers to allow it to extend the collective agreement and thus undermine collective bargaining , it has no merit.
Notices were delivered to employees on October 27 to inquire about the conditions of the collective agreement, with the first meeting scheduled for October 30. There was a meeting that occurred where Numsa raised objections to the process. After that meeting, the union launched its dismissal request against the downsizing process.
The employees who signed the agreement waived their rights to wages between May and December 1, and also agreed to a reduction in compensation for 2021, in addition to agreeing to cuts.
Numsa had accused Comair of trying to avoid the process of downsizing the airline in distress through the conclusion of a collective agreement with Solidarity and an association of pilots.
Numsa argued that it shouldn’t be bound by the collective bargaining agreement, the court finds that Comair’s business rescue professionals Richard Ferguson and Shaun Collyer have acted procedurally unfair, and that the airline issued new Section 189 notices.
Numsa spokesman Phakamile Hlubi-Majola said the union is still studying the ruling, while Solidarity’s evaluation and advocacy organizer Derek Mans described the ruling as a victory for workers.
“It was extremely important that this agreement remain in force to ensure the survival of the airline and allow it to fly again on December 1, 2020. It is thanks to this agreement that the jobs of hundreds of employees protected, and the sustainability long-term the airline is protected, ”he said in a statement Monday.
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