The Johannesburg Labour Court has granted the country’s oldest journalists’ union, the South African Union of Journalists, an order allowing its liquidation.
The court in February gave interested parties until 10am on Tuesday to state why it should not make the order final. On Tuesday the court made the order and appointed a liquidator to wind up the union’s affairs.
The union, founded in the 1920s, has trust funds with considerable assets.
Membership at its peak was around 900. In a letter to its remaining members dated February 9, the union’s interim national executive said the application followed a
vote by union members last year.
”Those members who voted in the ballot, which had to be conducted in a certain way to conform with the union’s Constitution and national labour legislation, provided the national executive committee with a clear mandate to undertake the process,” the letter read.
The vote itself took about a year to organise. It followed a decision by the union’s last congress, held in Durban in 2003, to dissolve the organisation. – Sapa