The marathon wage strike in the automobile industry – which shut down more than half the country’s assembly lines and stopped production of up to 9 000 vehicles – has entered its 10th day. Late last night union sources said there were strong indications that 4 500 workers at two SA Motor Corporation plants and 6 000 strikers at the Volkswagen assembly line in Uitenhage would go back to work on Monday. But the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) said a hard-line attitude by the management of Toyota’s strike-bound plant in Prospecton, Durban made it unlikely that its 3 500-strong workforce would stop striking.
The Mercedes Benz assembly line near Port Elizabeth was also hit by a series of worker demonstrations and placard protests against the controversial Labour Relations Act but did not experience any loss of production. Mercedes workers have also stopped handling Goodyear tyres in solidarity with 1 200 workers who have been staging a one-month strike against the way in which the multinational has disinvested. The motor strike also spread to Toyota’s marketing division in Sandton, Johannesburg, on Wednesday as some 400 workers walked off the job in a show of solidarity with the sacked strikers in Durban. They want the company to re-enter national wage talks and are demanding their own wage hike of R2 an hour. There were signs last night that the strike would roll into the Delta factory in Port Elizabeth.
Some 15 000 Numsa members downed tools last week at production lines belonging to VW, Toyota and Samcor to back demands made in national wage talks for an across-the board wage hike of R2 an hour and a minimum wage industry-wide of R6,58 an hour. VW this week announced it had shut its plant in Uitenhage indefinitely and had pulled out of the wage talks ”until such time as the company received an undertaking from the union that employees would resume their duties in accordance with their contracts of employment”. Toyota sacked 3 600 strikers at its Prospecton plant, saying it would reemploy those who were prepared to continue working. At Samcor’s plants in Pretoria and Port Elizabeth the strike remained firm, with workers sitting in and holding report-back meetings on the premises.
VW public relations director Ronny Kruger told Weekly Mail the Uitenhage plant lost an average of 300 vehicles a day while Toyota officials said their production line stopped producing 400 vehicles a day during the strike. Samcor declined to say what its production loss was but it is believed to be more than 200 a day. This makes a total of 9 000 vehicles lost over the 10 days of the strike. All three companies have been holding talks with Numsa in a bid to resolve the crisis. The union’s negotiating team met in Port Elizabeth yesterday to consider a back-to-work plan at Samcor and VW.
Numsa organiser Gavin Hartford said, however, that sacked Toyota workers had rejected tough conditions laid down by management for their reinstatement These included undertakings that workers would refrain from strike action during wage talks, would accept procedures laid down in the Labour Relations Act and would accept disciplinary action against those who had instigated the strike. At the centre of the upsurge in militancy is Numsa’s determination to bargain collectively in the industry at a joint national forum with all employers.
This year’s wage talks are the first in which the major car manufacturers have agreed to depart from plant-based bargaining and negotiate with Numsa in a single national forum. Nissan, BMW and Mercedes Benz together with the strike-bound firms – are Party to the talks. Delta is the only corporation that has remained out of the talks. But the wave of militancy has led many of the vehicle firms to reconsider their position. Toyota’s industrial relations director Theo van den Bergh said national bargaining had ”resulted in the worst-ever industrial action in the industry to date” and this confirmed reservations that the company had from the start.
But Numsa representative Les Kettledas told the Weekly Mail the union was determined to press its demands for national wage talks. The organisation had made this demand a priority in order to counter management’s tactic of deregulating and trying to exempt as many plants as possible from minimum conditions of employment, he said. Proof that this was becoming a favoured employer strategy could be found in the way employers opted out of the industrial council for the paper and print industry and attempts to exempt smaller firms from last year’s wage talks in the metal industry.
Apart from wages, Numsa’s other demands in the national talks include: a 40-hour week; six months paid maternity leave; retrenchment pay equivalent to one month’s wages for each year of service, and freedom from the fear of dismissal during legitimate strikes. Numsa has also mounted a major campaign for a national negotiating forum in the tyre industry. Meanwhile the one-month strike by some 1 200 workers at the Goodyear tyre plant in Port Elizabeth dragged on despite company threats to dismiss strikers unless they returned to work by 9.30am today. The strikers have been locked out by the company.
Karen Evans and Justice Segonyela report from Port Elizabeth that Goodyear PRO Mike London has confirmed that workers will be dismissed unless they returned today. Numsa members are demanding separation pay of at least R5 000 for each worker, guaranteed conditions of employment, maintenance of existing labour agreements, pay-out of all pension benefits, and the writing off of all housing loans before the sale goes through. In May Goodyear informed workers that the sell-out to local company Consol, a member of the Anglo Vaal group, involved a mere change in share ownership.
Meanwhile Mobil SA has announced it will not agree to demands by the Chemical Workers’ Industrial Union that it make public the agreement of sale under which it was bought out by Gencor this year. The CWIU said its refusal strengthened union suspicions that the sellout amounted to bogus disinvestment and strong links remained between Mobil SA and Mobil US. Until the union was satisfied the US corporation had fully disinvested from South Africa, Mobil would be a target of the CWIU’s campaign to prevent corporate camouflage.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
