Matching for employee salary
Match, which offers HIV and TB services in three states, has told nearly 900 employees they are unable to pay their salaries after receiving stopwork notifications from USAID. Employees have obtained court orders to continue paying their salaries until appropriate reduction processes are followed. Currently, the match is taking part in a voluntary business rescue, paying employees with the remaining USAID funds despite notices that the vehicle was stopped. Two of the three USAID grants have returned, but have not yet received additional funding.
A USAID-funded nonprofit organization that provides community HIV and TB services to thousands of people around South Africa voluntarily took part in business rescue.
This comes after about 900 employees have obtained a court order that forces the organization to pay salaries despite the suspension of USAID funds.
Due to the business rescue process, court orders will be automatically suspended. However, business rescue practitioner Ken Stewart oversaw the management of the Mothers, Adolescents and Child Health Institute (match) to pay some of the employees in February and March, and told Groundup only at this stage, depending on the projects they worked on.
He allows employees to be paid from the organization’s unused USAID funds. He said two of the three grants have been revived by USAID, but no additional money has been received yet.
“We’re taking Peter to pay for Paul,” he said. “I’m just doing damage control, but I have to apply South African labour law.”
In February, the Durban Labour Court ruled in favour of employees who were “temporarily fired” following President Donald Trump’s executive order, putting a three-month hold on all USAID awards withheld reviews of foreign aid policies.
Judge Mahomed held that matches must comply with Labor Relations Act.
The judge also ordered that the match should restrain employees until they revive and adhere to fair procedures. The match was ordered to pay salaries in February and beyond until complying with the regulations of the law.
In a court paper on the emergency application, which was heard and decided in February this year, Jabulani Mishack Khathi, project manager for the men’s health program, said he spoke about 888 people affected by the “temporary layoffs.”
He said this was the result of Trump’s “false anger,” which resulted in halting payments of foreign aid and subsidies. Katy said the match was not meaningfully consulted with employees.
The match was a recipient of three awards (USAID grants) and employed 1,060 people at Kwazulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga. Kathi said at the end of January this year, more than 800 employees were told to “stop work” after the suspension of the USAID Awards and return all the tools in the transaction.
They were informed that they should not return to work and would not be paid as of February 1st.
There was a subsequent online meeting with employees – during which they were muted.
He argued that the questions addressed to the HR department were not answered.
Khathi said the match was not open about its financial position and had money in the bank account. He allegedly a related notice regarding a funding suspension. This specifically excluded spending on operating expenses, allowing us to pay our salary.
In an affidavit against it, Match CEO Katherine Sarle argued that the organization’s hands were tied down by Trump’s orders. She said the executive order was issued “suddenly, without warning” and affected 4,000 organizations in more than 100 countries. “We didn’t spare,” she said.
USAID advises that all programs be put on hold and reasonable steps must be taken to minimize costs incurred.
As a result, Match worked with various creditors, including landlords, to arrange payments for the public holidays.
“When we informed employees that we were instructed to suspend all programs and not to pay any further costs, this was not a letter ending employment. We are implementing temporary layoffs on the whole without pay, which is not initiating the reduction process or dismissing them for operational reasons.
Sign up for the AllAfrica newsletter for free
Get the latest African news
success!
Almost finished…
You need to check your email address.
Follow the instructions in the email you sent to complete the process.
error!
There was a problem processing the submission. Please try again later.
She said that the match applied for a waiver for a particular project and submitted it to USAID for payroll payments, but the waiver has not yet been granted and USAID did not grant approval for payroll payments from funds balances from previous payments.
She said at the time, in any case, she didn’t have enough money to pay her salary.
The match took place at Business Rescue on March 10th. The first meeting of creditors took place on March 20th.
According to the minutes of the meeting, there are around 500 creditors.
From a legal standpoint, business rescue plans will be due by mid-April, but Stewart has asked creditors to extend the date until the end of June. This was to provide the results of the US Foreign Assistance Review scheduled for May 23, 2025.
