Trade union Solidarity, which has 7 000 members working at Eskom, is urging the State-owned utility to abandon its voluntary-severance offer to employees and focus instead on rebuilding staff morale as part of a broader effort to improve the currently dire outlook for electricity supply.

Solidarity CEO Dirk Hermann said it was entirely inappropriate for Eskom to be offering packages to workers whose skills were crucial to the sustenance of operations.

Solidarity represented many of the semi- and high-skilled workers at the utility, including most of its artisans.

“So our members run Eskom,” Hermann averred, adding that it was “wrong to try and save money through severance packages”, the existence of which was serving only to lower the morale of individuals who were already working long hours under difficult circumstances.

The union’s electricity sector coordinator Schalk de Bruin revealed that its disquiet over the unintended consequences associated with the offer had been aired at a meeting with Eskom management – a meeting that had also attended by the National Union of Mineworkers (Numsa) and the National Unions of Metalworkers of South Africa.

“At that engagement we warned that Eskom risked losing its top power-generation skills,” De Bruin revealed.

Some 3 500 individuals had reportedly applied for the package, but Eskom subsequently either withdrew the offer, or indicated that it would be reviewing packages that had already been approved.

Eskom’s Andrew Etzinger told Engineering News Online that employees had been given until February to apply.

“Thereafter we will decide on which applications to approve. It’s too early to speculate on the outcome, [but] clearly we won't approve all applications,” he added.

Etzinger would not be drawn on the number of applications, saying only that the utility would not be providing “running totals of applications received” and would only provide figures at the end of February.

“The offering of the package is wrong on several levels,” Hermann warned.

“In the first place, you don’t offer packages when the morale is as low as it is now, because that will lead to an exodus of skills. We believe that they must do exactly the opposite – they must invest in the morale of the company . . . because what they need now is 150% from the workers to keep the lights on.”

Meanwhile, the trade union also made an appeal for all South Africans to “unite to alleviate the prevailing electricity supply crisis”.

Hermann said the electricity crisis was bigger than initially anticipated and would last for a long time. “We call on President Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema to unite in this crisis; we call on the DA and the ANC; on Renate Barnard and the Police Service; Cosatu and Numsa, Amcu and the platinum industry; and Steve Hofmeyr and Conrad Koch. I will personally contact Jimmy Manyi. We request Parliament to unite in the chant: Save our electricity,” Hermann quipped.

But he also stressed that Solidarity would remain “critical” and urged the utility not to victimize its members when they decided to come forward and highlight areas of concern.

However, senior economic researcher Piet le Roux stressed that, besides playing a watchdog role, Solidarity would also seek to mobilise support from business and individuals to ensure that the risk of a “cascading network failure” was reduced.

In parallel, though, it would continue to lobby for an end to Eskom’s monopoly and for the liberalisation of the electricity supply industry, which it saw as the only long-term remedy to the current crisis.

“At an Eskom level, the utility needs to focus just on electricity supply. It should focus on the creation and retention of skills, maintenance and proper project management. Involvement in The New Age business breakfasts and other peripheral activities should be suspended to symbolically show a commitment to electricity supply,” Le Roux concluded.