Sometimes called the Detroit of South Africa, the Port Elizabeth-Uitenhage economy is reeling from the effects of the automobile strike, writes Steuart Wright
IN Tambo Village, a shack settlement outside Uitenhage, Prudence Ndika (35) doesn’t know how she is going to feed her family of four.
A month ago her husband, Fezile Ndika (39), a worker with 15 years’ service on Volkswagen’s assembly line, downed tools along with 25 000 motor workers throughout the country in support of wage demands.
Now the family has no income.
“There are school fees, we struggle with no food. I just went next door to ask for sugar. I don’t work and we can’t pay the account for the furniture,” she said, stroking the plastic-covered couch in her cramped lounge.
“My husband also has two brothers and his mother in Paterson and he is the only breadwinner. My children can’t afford to sleep without food, they are begging to make ends meet.”
Yet Prudence Ndika stands by her husband’s decision to strike.
“I know it is for a good cause. If Numsa (the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa) achieves what it is fighting for, then we will be able to buy things like new school clothes. We are suffering but after the suffering there will be something better,” she said.
Carol Plaatjies (45) works as a tea lady at Auto Industrial Centre. She’s part of the skeleton staff still on duty but her husband, Dial Plaatjies (45), employed by AIC as a spraypainter, only worked one day this month.
Carol Plaatjies is at a loss as to how her family of six will survive on the R185 she earns a week without her husband’s R400 weekly wage.
“There is no food, my baby is lying in hospital, we don’t have medical aid and I just got the bill for R220 and I am still waiting for all the accounts. It’s impossible to pay all the debts with my small amount of money,” she said.
“I don’t think it is something good. They must go back to work … If they don’t work then I can’t work, my husband can’t work. They must think about the children and their future.”
There is a R15-an-hour difference in wages between the highest and lowest paid worker on Fezile Ndika’s grade-three skill level, an anomaly which workers and employers hoped to address when wage talks began more than a month ago.
But those hopes were dashed when Numsa and the Automobile Manufacturers Employers’ Organisation (Ameo) failed to agree on a deadline for eradicating the wage curve.
Ameo also declined to make a final offer on wage increases until the restructuring issue was off the table because of its implications for budgeting. It was agreed to postpone restructuring until next year’s round of negotiations.
That was when the talks, which held the promise of a groundbreaking agreement in South African industrial relations, took a nose dive.
Ameo bumped its initial offer of a nine percent wages increase up to 10 percent and was only willing to get around the table to hear Numsa’s acceptance. After Numsa dropped its demand from 12 percent to 10,5 percent, neither side was prepared to budge the half a percent that would end the strike.
That was almost a fortnight ago. To date, the motor industry has lost about R2- billion in turnover; workers have forfeited more than R60-million in wages.
The halt in production at car and truck assemblies around the country has had a ripple effect: the auto-component manufacturing industry is losing R20-million a day and the jobs of a further 188 000 workers are at risk.
National Association of Automotive Component and Allied Manufacturers’ executive director Denzyl Vermooten says about 20 companies have temporarily shut down.
The Port Elizabeth branch of AIC is one of the 180 or so companies in this support industry. Since the strike dried up demand for AIC spray painting and plastic trim, its workers have been put on unpaid leave. — Ecna