OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday 9.30PM.
AT least 13000 Chemical Workers and Industrial Union members on Wednesday marched though the streets of major cities to present employers with a memorandum detailing their demands for a 10,5% across-the-board wage increase.
In Johannesburg an estimated 3000 members marched from Library Gardens in the city centre to Total House in Braamfontein to present a memorandum to chemical employers’ negotiator Fanie Ernst. Protests were also staged in Cape Town, Durban and Pretoria city centres.
Unions are demanding a 10,5% increase, 40-hour working week, six months’ maternity leave with four months’ full pay, and pensions based on salaries and shift allowances combined while employers are sticking to their offer of between 6,5% and 8,5%.
Ernst said the protest is back-stepping by the unions, “a lot of issues in the memorandum have already been taken off the table by negotiators. Despite the industry making contingency plans by stockpiling and re-organising plant processes in anticipation the strike, Ernst said the one-day protest had already cost the industry a lot of money.