Talks aimed at resolving the ongoing strike in the security industry will continue on Monday, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) said on Friday.
”Today [Friday] we set the basis for negotiations,” Satawu’s national coordinator for the security industry, Jackson Simon, said after nearly 10 hours of talks with employers.
Friday’s meeting started at 11am, two hours late, after a disagreement between the union and employers over the venue, he said.
In the end, they met at the Parktown offices of the private dispute resolution agency, Tokisa, instead of the premises of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA).
Simon said they would meet again, at the same venue, at noon on Monday.
”Employers have termed it exploratory talks. We term it negotiation. Today [Friday] we will try to create the condition for real negotiations,” Satawu general secretary Randall Howard said at a media briefing before the talks.
Both parties had to grapple with the matter. ”You have to keep talking until the solution comes.”
Satawu is demanding an 11% wage increase and four months paid maternity leave.
It has indicated that it might be prepared to suspend the strike if employers return to the negotiating table and commit themselves to not victimising union members on their return to work.
Howard said reconciliation with the 14 minority unions who signed an April 1 wage agreement for an 8,3% increase would be difficult.
”The other unions decided to undermine trade union rules by signing … We believe they collaborated with the employers.
”Respect for those unions will be difficult to reinstate.”
However, cooperation between all unions had to be pursued so that security workers’ ”power” could be properly consolidated.
While he condemned the recent strike violence and called on Satawu members not to resort to violence, Howard said the blood of scab labourers killed or injured was on employers’ hands.
”I believe that the employers must take responsibility if they are willing to invite those desperate for work …”
Any worker who chose to associate with an employer during a strike also needed to be aware of the consequences, he said.
He called on Satawu members to expose those who used the strike for ”opportunistic criminal activity”.
In the latest incident on Thursday, three people, believed to be security guards, were seriously injured when they were thrown off a train at Johannesburg’s Cleveland station. — Sapa