The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is extremely concerned by the alarming plight of workers at the Mail & Guardian. Recent and depressing media reports indicate that this pillar of South Africa’s media landscape is experiencing severe financial difficulties and highly distressed staff have been served with retrenchment notices.
Whilst media houses across the world, including South Africa, have struggled with the transition from print to electronic media, and the proliferation of free and often fake news sites, South Africa can ill afford to see the much-heralded Mail & Guardian close its doors, let alone retrench staff.
We are convinced that the Mail & Guardian can be saved, more so given its relatively small staff footprint of just over 25. It is urgent that the owner of this proud newspaper, Mr. Hoosain Karjieker, treat this crisis with the seriousness and transparency that it deserves. We cannot afford in this media landscape and an economy battling a 43.1% unemployment rate, to tolerate a single worker being sent to the unemployment queue.
All too often, including in the media sector, workers have seen deficient and reckless employers mismanage once internationally respected companies and newspapers into the ground, including failing to honour the various financial commitments, and then savagely dump the bill upon workers. COSATU believes, judging from media reports that this is tragically the case at the Mail & Guardian.
The Labour Relations Act requires all employers, without exception, to meaningfully engage workers and unions on alternatives to retrenchments. These engagements must be in good faith and allow workers and their unions to table alternatives that must be seriously considered by the employer. The employer must share their full financial reports with workers and their unions during these engagements. This is a legal requirement not an indulgence by a benevolent employer.
The reported rush to retrench workers and gut the Mail & Guardian by the employer is a worrying sign that the owner views the Labour Relations Act as a little more than a tick box exercise and that they are determined to retrench workers at all costs. A progressive employer would understand that their employees are the greatest asset of any workplace and without them, any turnaround plan will fail. Gutting the Mail & Guardian newsroom will reduce it to little more than a university newsletter not the internationally renowned media institution it has been.
It is a tragedy that when the Mail & Guardian should be celebrating its 40th anniversary shortly and its heroic role in the struggle against apartheid and for our constitutional democracy, that instead its owner has plunged it into a life and death fight for survival. COSATU believes that it is time that a new more committed and competent owner be found for this bastion of progressive media freedom.
The Federation will be providing and ramping up its full support to the workers at the Mail & Guardian and efforts, including finding a new owner, to save these jobs and this proud paper.
Issued by COSATU
Matthew Parks (COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator)
Cell: 082 785 0687
Email: matthew@cosatu.org.za