The United National Transport Union (UNTU) wish to point out to Siyabonga Gama, Chief Executive Officer of Transnet, and everyone else who might also be in the dark, that decisions of this Union is made by our Executive Council consisting of seventeen members under the leadership of our President Wyndham Evans and executed by our General Secretary, Steve Harris.
In a statement sent out to Transnet employees, Gama has for a second time in less than a year resorted to attacking Harris in person as being “malicious”. UNTU would like to point out to Gama and the rest of his management team that UNTU’s General Secretary speaks on behalf of this Union and not on behalf of himself.
The statements made by Harris about the fact that Transnet had blatantly misled UNTU during negotiations in the Transnet Bargaining Council (TBC) by making no reference to its loan to South African Express Airways SOC Ltd (SA Express) to the value of R222 million on its financial statements, but instead pointed out that the state owned enterprise (SOE) had cash flow problems and needed a multi-term agreement to convince investors to invest in the company to improve its cash flow, was made on behalf of the leadership of this Union and not on behalf of Harris.
Furthermore, Transnet’s Management informed UNTU yesterday that Gama was no longer available to attend the scheduled meeting with UNTU on 30 May 2018 as he needs to attend a session of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee. UNTU leadership has indicated our availability on later dates.
UNTU remains of the view that Transnet negotiated in bad faith by misleading us about its alleged cash flow problems. It is common sense that Transnet would have had a much better cash flow had it not loaned R222 million to SA Express.
UNTU remains of the view that Transnet has broken down the trust relationship between the parties.
