Johannesburg | Monday
THE National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) on Sunday suspended “until further notice” a crippling three-week strike in the automobile industry, after employers agreed to raise wages by nine percent.
Numsa’s secretary general Silumko Nondwangu told a press conference that “substantive progress has been made in reaching an agreement”.
Nondwangu said the three-year accord would increase wages by nine percent, and would be followed by one percent increases in 2002 and 2003.
But the union leader said the agreement in principle had not yet been signed, adding that several issues were still being negotiated before a national arbitration panel.
Nondwangu also said workers in the tire manufacturers sector — employed at Firestone, Goodyear, Dunlop and Continental — would strike on Monday over continued wage concerns.
Numsa had demanded a 12% hike in wages at the start of the strike on August 6.
South Africa’s auto strike, involving 20 000 workers, disabled production at BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Delta (in which General Motors owns a 49% stake), Ford, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen.
DaimlerChrysler has warned that it would take a multi-million dollar contract out of South Africa if the strike did not end soon.
The company’s South African chairman, Christoph Kopke, said an export order for the production of the C-class Mercedes Benz could be shifted to plants in Stuttgard or Bremen, in Germany.
According to the International Metalworkers Federation, the average hourly wage for a South African blue collar car worker in 1998 was $3,43 dollars.
The level was just over 20% of a Canadian car worker’s average wage, one-third of a German car worker’s wage, and 18% of a Japanese carworker’s wage.
Meanwhile, the government warned last week that a proposed two-day general strike by South Africa’s largest trade union federation will severely undermine the success of the upcoming UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban.
The 1,7-million-strong Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has decided to launch the strike on August 29 and 30 after failing to win concessions from the government on the privatisation of state assets.
In 1999, South Africa lost 3,1-million working hours due to labour strikes, according to the official South African yearbook, published by the South African government. – AFP