AT a public enterprises portfolio committee meeting on October 17, members raised 'great concern' over SAA's high turnover of senior managers and asked the airline for clarity on what was being done to address the matter.
Khaya Ngqula, SAA ceo, responded that the restructuring plan had allowed for the loss of 223 heads from management. TravelHub has a list of names of at least 25 of the executives who have left the airline who represented much of SAA's expertise, and the great majority, TravelHub believes, came out of SAA's top 150 managers. They have not necessarily left as a result of the retrenchment process or the offering of Voluntary Severance Packages (VSPs). But they have left, and SAA is the poorer for it.
Clive Else, the airline's cfo, told the committee regarding the staff complement, that the training of existing staff with regard to multi-skilling had been taking place but it was, however, still a big challenge.
SAA is now taking a slightly more conciliatory approach to pilots (an SAA Pilots Association (Saapa) newsletter of October tells members SAA has amended its previous hard-line position and is not demanding a clean-slate approach, nor demanding the scrapping of labour contracts). This means it must pay heed to the labour concessions Saapa is holding out to SAA, which Saapa values at R241,7m, but which SAA values at only R103,5m. (Saapa disputes this and wants the calculations audited independently.)
Either way, there will be a shortfall in the closure of the R638m gap of either R396m or R535m, which means, according to the restructuring plan, a further loss of either 1 385 or 1 872 personnel. Following the trend of the first retrenchment programme, 30% of these will be from management. Concerns are now that it is not just a coming haemorrhage of pilots that will threaten SAA, but a massive brain drain as expertise flows outward. How well can the airline function with this loss of intellectual capital?
