Trade union Solidarity lodged court papers on Thursday requesting that SAA be placed in business rescue.

The Companies Act allows trade unions, or any interested party such as a creditor, to bring such an application. Business rescue aims to facilitate the rehabilitation of a company that is financially distressed by providing for the temporary supervision of the company and management of its affairs, by a business rescue practitioner.

The court will need to make a ruling on whether SAA is a candidate for business rescue or whether it should be liquidated. The company has not tabled its audited financial statements to parliament for two years because it is not a going concern.

The union said it is acting on behalf of its members within the SAA group, but also on behalf of its members in public enterprises in all sectors in the SA economy and on behalf of every South African who pays tax.

“The crisis in SAA not only threatens the jobs of SAA employees, it threatens all workers and taxpayers. Solidarity’s members are also ordinary workers who pay a portion of their hard-earned money as taxes. We also act on behalf of the approximately 500,000 members of the Solidarity Movement who faithfully pay their taxes,” Solidarity’s COO Dirk Hermann said.

“They cannot allow their tax money to be constantly misused to subsidise struggling, ineffective state-owned enterprises (SOEs).”

Solidarity had previously planned to bring such an application but was encouraged by former CEO Vuyani Jarana and the department of public enterprises not to do so.