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A flySafair plane seen at airport.
Trade union Solidarity has blamed FlySafair management for the pilots’ upcoming protracted strike set to start on Monday.
More than 200 pilots are set to down tools for 14 days. This came after wage negotiations deadlocked between the union and the airline.
The union, which is demanding a ten percent wage increase, has rejected the airline’s five-point-seven percent offer.
Solidarity’s deputy general-secretary, Helgard Cronje, says the union only applied to strike for one day.
“So, we called out the one-day strike mainly to get the company back to the negotiation table. They then basically decided to give a seven-day lockout. Now that the 7-day lockout means our members cannot go and work. It’s as if they are striking, but it’s something that is initiated by the company. And it’s also a “no work, no pay” principle. So, they make the decision that for 7 days our pilots aren’t allowed to work, and they will also not be paid.
Cronje also says the company has unilaterally implemented a rostering system that the pilots did not agree with.
“They were on a fixed pattern roster, which means they would work 6 days, they would have two days off, they would work 6 days, and they would have 3 days off. They now went to an open pattern roster system, so it means there is no predictability. A pilot only finds out 10 days before the end of the month how the following month will look. And they aren’t open to building in certain protection measures for the pilots. So the pilots are totally at the mercy of the company when it comes to their working days, and they basically implemented that whilst we were in a dispute and consulting about the rostering system. They just went ahead and unilaterally implemented that.
