SAA retrenches most of their senior white male pilots
In a stunning display of reverse racism, South African Airways, which recently exited the equivalent of USA Chapter 11, has retrenched most of the white male pilots who were the most senior pilots in the airline.
SAA has not operated scheduled flights since April 2020 and stopped all operations around August 2020. The SAA pilots union, SAAPA, was locked out by the company in December 2020 due to various disputes between the airline and the union, the main one being that the airline was insisting on the cancellation of all agreements, including the agreement regulating the seniority list. The union then declared a retaliatory strike.
They also did not pay any of the locked-out pilots when other pilots, all non-white, received payment after resigning from SAAPA to join another union. They also refused to allow pilots to take early retirement in order to access their pensions. They basically engaged in a strategy aimed at starving out the remaining pilots.
SAAPA finally relented when it became apparent that many pilots were in severe financial distress and were considering resigning to access their pensions and that they would lose out on severance packages if they did so.
SAA then broke up the pilot group into 8 demographic categories, being white male, white female, black male, black female, coloured male, coloured female, indian male and indian female. They then assigned quotas for Captains and FOs to each category. They rehired 88 pilots based on these quotas. Many white male pilots opted not to accept employment, especially when former long-range Captains were being offered FO positions and pilots from other demographic groups, who were many hundreds of seniority positions below them, and half their age and with a fraction of their experience were being offered immediate command. They would then have to fly as FOs with pilots who were once their FO or even their relief pilots. There are some white male Captains, with up to 25 years at SAA, who accepted the FO positions out of pure desperation to have an income and to remain current, albeit it at a quarter of what they were earning previously, and who are now being downgraded to FO. There are some new Captains who have only been with SAA for 6 years who will now take their positions and who will sit in the left seat with them in the right seat.
All other categories of employees at SAA were rehired based on LIFO (last in first out) but not the pilots. Experience and seniority for pilots was not a consideration at the new SAA.
As an example, for one white married pilot couple, the husband is senior to his wife, and both were FOs, but the husband is now retrenched and the wife is getting her command.
The airline has also stated that in the future, where pilots are required to fill quotas in a specific demographic group, they will look outside the airline if there are no pilots in the airline, in that demographic group, capable of filling the positions. Essentially, what that means, is that most, if not all, of the white male FO's, most of whom were Captains, will never get command again.