Photo: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Thousands of South African port workers are worried about job security when Filipino billionaire Enrique Razon’s International Container Terminal Services Incorporated (ICTSI) takes over the operation of Transet’s Durban Container Terminal Pier 2.
Following the public private partnership announced in July 2023, trade unions have demanded a guarantee to the terminal’s more than 3 500 workers that there will be no retrenchments during the 25-year concession to the privately owned company.
Under the contract ICTSI is expected to expand and upgrade the terminal to help it increase container cargo throughput from the current two million twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs) to an eventual capacity of 2.8 million TEUs.
The unions, which tabled their demands before December, say they have not yet had any confirmation from current employer Transnet and its proposed private partner on whether the original contract, which ensured job security for only two years, would be amended to meet their demands.
Unions have now threatened to take legal action to reverse the deal until the company complies with their demands or to declare a labour dispute and strike over the issue.
Jack Mazibuko, the general secretary of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, said Satawu remained “completely against” the privatisation of the port terminal and had been negotiating with Transnet to ensure there would be no retrenchments in the process.
“Since we put the demand on the table they [Transnet] have promised us they are going to speak to the Filipinos and that they are going to amend their so-called agreement and come back to us,” Mazibuko said.
“We are still waiting for them to come back to us. We hear that they met Transnet last week and they have amended the original agreement saying they can take responsibility for two years [of no job cuts].”
Mazibuko said the union had been scheduled to meet Transnet executives on Monday but the state entity had cancelled the meeting “at the eleventh hour”.
The union had also demanded that Transet provide workers with “a proper asset assessment” for the terminal, because it was unhappy that the state-owned entity had not revealed the price that the ICTSI would pay to secure the deal to take over operations of the terminal, nor the details of the contract.
“We want to know the value of Pier 2 assets because we don’t want a situation like SAA where the whole airline was sold for R51. We feel we are not happy because the whole process has not been transparent. In everything they do, they play their cards close to their chest and are unable to tell us the asset value Pier 2,” Mazibuko said.
“If we are not happy with it they leave us with no option but to engage with our members and seek legal recourse. We told them our proposals in the last meeting that we will seek legal recourse where we go to court and force them to reverse the deal until they disclose all the information the union wants, or go through a process to declare a dispute, and then the workers will go on strike.”
United National Transport Union president Steven Leshabana said the union had made the same demand that jobs should be secure for 25 years and that the terminal’s asset value should be divulged.
Pier 2 is Transnet’s biggest container terminal, accounting for 72% of the Port of Durban’s throughput and 46% of South Africa’s port traffic.
Transnet Port Terminals and the ICTSI had not responded to questions about the unions’ concerns and the pricing details of the deal at the time of publication.
But, when it announced the partnership with the ICTSI, Transnet Port Terminals said the deal would help to reposition the terminal for best practice performance, ensuring growth in volume throughput, and provide operational and commercial support to access global shipping line call routes.
“This will not only improve the logistics associated with servicing South African ports, but will play a significant part in stimulating exports and imports,” it said at the time.
This is aligned with the Transnet National Ports Authority’s plan to increase the container capacity in the Port of Durban from 3.3 million TEUs to 11.4 million twenty foot equivalent units.
A total of 18 responses were received to Transnet’s initial call for request for interest in August 2021, nine of them from international terminal operators.