South Africans have been shocked to learn about the salary structure at state broadcaster SABC. The embattled parastatal currently going through a messy retrenchment process has endured protests from its staff.
SABC staff have been protesting against their employer for what they called an unfair retrenchment exercise.
Confusion over retrenchment ending
On Tuesday, group executive for news and current affairs Phathiswa Magopeni announced that the organisation was to stop issuing Section 189 retrenchment letters after being confronted by angry staff. He added that he was to speak to the Human Resources department to stop issuing letters and that employees must continue their work as usual.
The human resources function did not cooperate with the Phathiswa Magopeni’s proposal or directive if he was in a position to make it.
They announced today that the retrenchment process would continue as planned.
“In light of the unfortunate incident which took place at our news division last night, please note that the S189 process is continuing as planned. SABC management and its Board apologise for any confusion that was created yesterday afternoon,” the public broadcaster’s head of human resources, Mojaki Mosia, said in a three-line email on Wednesday morning much to the surprise of the staff.
“Management will engage with the news team on the concerns that they have raised.”
“As a person who accounts to you and as a person who expects you to do your job as per delivering on the public mandate, I will go and negotiate it afterwards, but at this point for the work of the public service to continue, I will talk to HR [and] whoever is senior, but from a responsibility to the newsroom, I cannot continue with these letters,” Magopeni said on Tuesday signalling an end to the newsroom’s nightmare.
SABC Salary structure
SABC intends to retrench a total of 400 staff from its total of 2,979.
The average salary of a staffer at SABC has been revealed to be R791,000 per annum.
The table reveals that there are more supervisors that the rest of the staff at SABC, a worrisome trend as it raises the wage bill of the parastatal. The supervisors at SABC earn almost six times lower than top management.