‘Eskom should focus on electricity, forget about race quotas,’ says union

Solidarity has threatened to drag Eskom to court should the utility push plans to retrench skilled workers, including 431 white males, as part of its employment equity plan for 2023-25.

An Eskom employee, who agreed to speak anonymously, said she wasn’t aware of the plans to lay off workers.

“This is the first I’ve heard of this,” she said.

‘Absurd racial targets’

Solidarity managing director Dr Dirk Hermann said he couldn’t see any indication of Eskom planning to deal with its skills challenges.

“This plan is only about skin colour at the different job levels,” he claimed. “These absurd racial targets come amid the fact that the maintenance of its power stations is one of Eskom’s biggest challenges.

“Eskom should now only focus on one thing: not race, but power.”

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Hermann said South Africans needed lights in their homes and power for their businesses, not racial targets.

The power utility had a long history of an aggressive racial policy, said Hermann. “Between 1994 and 2002, at least 10 207 white people left Eskom,” he said. “From about 2000, Eskom paid out R1.8 billion in current rand value in packages to get rid of white people.

“This rapid loss of skills led to a huge loss of expertise and institutional knowledge.”

The trade union’s head of communications, Morné Malan, said the plan was complicated and one had to compare the respective tables to find the suggested retrenchments.

For instance, “at the top management level, an 11th management member is added, who will be a black man. Senior management increases by 25 positions to 357, while white incumbents will have to decrease by two”, he said.

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Labour economist Dieter von Fintel said he didn’t know enough about the specifics of the Eskom employment equity plan to comment.

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“Is Eskom planning to lay off workers, stop hiring workers or rely on voluntary resignation to reach its targets? Three different strategies with a similar impact,” he said.

Eskom concerned with ‘nonsense’

Economist Dawie Roodt said if it was true, it was a clear indication of the power utility not having a clue what it was doing.

“This is a good example of moving the deck chairs on the Titanic.

“We don’t have power but Eskom is concerned with nonsense. They are concerned about political goals and want to lay off skilled workers while trying to find other skilled workers. Are they silly?”

Roodt questioned why Eskom focused on race while the country sat in the dark.

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Spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha denied the allegations of planned layoffs, made no comment as to why Eskom was planning on allegedly laying off skilled workers and referred the inquiry to human resources.

– marizkac@citizen.co.za