One of the most common remedies proposed for addressing Eskom’s financial and operational problems is that of reducing jobs at the state-owned utility. The argument is premised on the view that Eskom is massively overstaffed and that its headcount should, thus, be reduced to help lower costs and boost efficiencies. Eskom is indeed a large employer, with about 39 000 people staffing its generation, transmission and distribution units (total of 47 000 employees on group level), and its payroll made up about 15% of total revenues of 180-billion in financial year 2018/19. Even if the utility were to pursue aggressive downsizing, however, it is unlikely that it would be able to realistically reduce its headcount by more than about 10% over the coming five years. Reducing its total payroll by 10% would, in turn, reduce its cost base by less than 1.5%.
