South African trade union Solidarity admitted on Tuesday that the retrenchment of all the employees of Denel Aviation’s Denel Personnel Solutions/Aero Manpower Group (DPS/AMG) now appeared to be inescapable. This followed from the first retrenchment meeting between unions representing the affected workers and Denel Aviation, which took place on Monday.

Denel Aviation is an aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul company and is part of the State-owned Denel defence industrial group. DPS has provided skilled maintenance personnel to the South African Air Force (SAAF) under the AMG contract since 1986.
The contract lapses on March 31.

At the Monday meeting, the South African Air Force (SAAF) confirmed by telephone that it would neither renew the DPS/AMG contract nor take over any of the contracts of the AMG employees. Denel Aviation has stated that 538 employess are affected, while Solidarity referred to 523 “aircraft specialists” of whom 208 are Solidarity members.

“Since the air force has confirmed that it would not be taking over any of the 523 aircraft specialists from Denel Aviation/AMG, we are trying, through the consultations, to deploy the employees within Denel or other companies,” stated Solidarity spokesperson Jack Loggenberg. Because of DPS/AMG’s contractual obligations to the SAAF, none of the workers can leave the company before March 31. In turn, this means that the retrenchment consultations should be completed by February 14.

“The air force probably wants to end the Denel contract because it is very expensive,” he opined. “If the air force were to take over some of the contracts of employment, a Section 197 [notice] would have to be issued as well for the transfer of the contracts. According to Section 197 of the Labour Relations Act, employees’ conditions of service and renumeration must be kept on the same level when their contracts of employment were transferred. It is therefore our suspicion that the air force, in order to save money, will wait until all the employees have been retrenched before possibly appointing some of them on a lower salary to do the same work.”

Solidarity’s spokesperson affirmed that the senior executives of Denel had “done everything possible” to rescue the contract with the SAAF. Although 40% of the DPS/AMG specialists are based in Pretoria, the rest are scattered across the country at various air force bases and stations, including Hoedspruit, Langebaanweg, Lephalale, Makhado, Overberg and Ysterplaat.