Anglo American's deadline for 2 100 dismissed workers to apply for re-employment was extended to 7am today after employees rejected yesterday's 3pm ultimatum.
The workers at four of Anglo's iron and steel plants in the Eastern Transvaal were fired on Monday after they refused to accept the company's offer on wage increases.
Anglo's Highveld Steel and Vanadium Corporation locked National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa's members out of the plants at the beginning of this week, saying the move was designed to persuade workers to accept their wage offer and that management was prepared to hold further talks to resolve the issue.
But the company had refused to budge from its minimum offer of a 41c an hour increase at talks initiated by the union yesterday – despite the willingness of workers to come down from their initial demand for a "living wage" increase of R1 an hour across the board to below 50c an hour, according to Bernie Fanaroff, secretary for Numsa's steel and engineering sector.
Management had also refused to consider a union request that the issue be sent to mediation and said the workers would be dismissed if they did not accept the company's offer, either individually or as group, by 3pm yesterday, said Fanaroff.
A meeting of Numsa members at the plants yesterday rejected the ultimatum and refused to return to work under management conditions. The deadline was then extended to 7am today.
Anglo representative James Duncan said earlier that management had only decided on the lockout after concluding an agreement with five of the six unions that are recognised at Highveld Steel. The Anglo representative said Highveld Steel management was aware of the allegations made by Numsa but was not prepared at the time of going to press to comment.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions has rejected management's claim that the lockout was an attempt to resolve the dispute. Ernest Sideris – Agenda News Service
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
