Pretoria - The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has vehemently denied claims that it initiated the retrenchment process taking place at the Road Accident Fund (RAF).
This after the RAF issued Section 189 notices that may result in the lay-off of over 400 employees.
The proposed date for retrenchments is November 31.
On Thursday, Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim, said RAF management allegedly issued communication saying that Numsa initiated Section 189 at the company.
“That is not true at all. The management of RAF attempted to get the union to rubber-stamp their strategy to guillotine workers and cut over 400 jobs through a dodgy restructuring process, which was outside of the CCMA process.
“RAF management are lying when they claim that they put measures in place to ‘mitigate the effects of Section 189,” Jim said in a statement.
Jim added that RAF had already taken a decision to retrench at least 472 employees when it declared that some positions would be redundant because of the implementation of the new, untested Integrated Claims Management System, (ICMS).
RAF management began contemplating restructuring as early as 2020 when they contracted PwC and since then, discussions have been taking place behind the scenes to restructure the company.
They began to implement this strategy around June this year.
“Numsa is against any job losses and we made that clear to them from the beginning … They were attempting to justify job losses because they want to introduce an automated system that some have speculated may cost RAF almost R1 billion, with no guarantee that the system will work as efficiently, or even deliver the same outcomes as workers,” Jim added.
In a letter addressed to the staff, RAF said the previous operating model had proved to be unsustainable and did not enable the organisation to carry out its legislative mandate effectively, hence, there was a need to implement a strategic plan to ensure a transformed and sustainable organisation.
In the meantime, the union is preparing for the first day of the Section 189 consultation with the CCMA which will be on October 10.
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