Cape Town - eMedia, the company that owns news channel eNCA, has again come under fire with allegations of lack of transformation and racism made in an open letter written by concerned staffers.
The two-page letter was addressed to Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) chief executive and chairman of the eMedia board, John Copelyn.
In the letter, the disgruntled staffers accuse the media channel of being racist, giving top posts to white people and of depriving workers their right to organise and join unions.
The station, which is the most watched 24-hour news channel in the country, was being slammed by its workers on a public platform for the second time. In May last year, a similar letter with the same grievances went viral.
In the recent letter it is alleged that the change of senior management had created turmoil and uncertainty among staff.
The letter reads: “We have noted since your takeover from Marcel Golding how your posture has shifted from a balanced approached to leaning to a clique of hand-picked managers.”
The letter went on to call out the company for appointing Anton Harber (as editor-in-chief) to a position that was previously held by a “white male”.
“We are aware that there is no dustbin for whites in your company, no wonder why RACISM is so rife and goes unpunished in this company.”
The accusations, however, were refuted by the company’s spokesman Vasili Vass.
Vass said: “The company takes a very dim view of this ‘open letter’ which appears deliberately intended to bring the group and its companies into disrepute. This mechanism is unsatisfactory in relation to some and it is a letter which is defamatory, grossly untrue in many respects, inciteful and harmful.”
Vass said the company had always tried to engage constructively with staff about their employment and to resolve any issues in amicable ways.
He said the company would probe the origins of the letter and its allegations.
The letter also addressed issues that the workers had with the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu), which is a shareholder in the company. The workers alleged the company was built using Sactwu’s pension fund.
“The shareholding was built with the union pension funds and the profits to date were through our sweat but we are not important to the GS (general secretary).”
General secretary Andrè Kriel was accused of not availing himself to engage with the workers “as he promised”.
Kriel said he had availed himself to the workers. He said they were the ones who failed to set up a meeting: “We take offence, the open letter was not factually correct. Not a single cent of our pension money was used to build eNCA. The statement is slander and we require it to be withdrawn.
“It is not that the workers are prevented from joining a union of their choice – it is their right to.”
Kriel said he would be meeting with the person who wrote the letter on Friday. He said he knew who it was.
Cape Argus