SABC workers gear up to take their strike to the streets
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) says its members will take to the streets on Wednesday to hand over a memorandum of demands to the government.
Unions at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) are unhappy with the ongoing section 189 process.
The SABC is currently in the process of retrenching more than 300 employees, with unions saying they have received no feedback on additional personnel also being served with retrenchment notices.
CWU General-Secretary, Aubrey Tshabalala, says they have served the SABC with a notice to strike.
“CWU last week Friday served the SABC with a notice to resume our industrial action on Wednesday and because of Covid-19 we tried, by all means, to ensure that we do not participate in spreading of the virus so our march will be in a form of the motorcade. It will start at Auckland Park and we will drive all the way to the Union Buildings to hand over our memorandum to the head of state," says Tshabalala.
Tshabalala says workers demand a new SABC management structure.
“One of those demands is for them to remove the board and put SABC under administration, stop the turnaround strategy that they came up with because it will have an impact on the marginalisation of our indigenous languages. It will have an impact on the inhouse capacity of the SABC to have its own content; therefore, it will rely on the private sector to buy content that in our view is a total privatization of the public broadcaster,” he adds.
Tshabalala says they call on President Cyril Ramaphosa and everyone who cares about the public broadcaster to speak out strongly against the retrenchments.
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