The Food and Allied Workers Union on Monday called for a consumer boycott of all Simba products, claiming the company’s use of so-called scab labour meant they could be unsafe to eat.
Fawu, whose members have been on strike at Simba factories since May 20, has also accused the company of apartheid-era labour relations.
Cosatu Western Cape secretary Tony Ehrenreich told a media briefing in Cape Town that retailers had been asked to stop buying Simba products, and union members at major supermarkets would refuse to handle them.
Teachers unions had also promised to ensure they were not stocked at schools when term re-opened.
The products, according to a boycott leaflet distributed by Fawu, include Simba and Lays chips, Niknaks and Fritos, plus the popular Halls, Vita C, Clorettes and Rascals ranges.
Ehrenreich said Fawu members working at Simba were trained to meet exacting food safety standards.
With the workers on strike, Simba was employing scab labour which had ”no idea” of the stringent requirements for safe products.
”They could, according to the shop stewards, be unfit for human consumption,” he said.
For their own health, consumers should not buy anything dated after May 20.
Fawu’s dispute with the company is partly over a proposed across-the-board increase, and partly over what the union says is a bid by the company to have some technically skilled personnel who are Fawu members excluded from the bloc that the union negotiates for.
Fawu’s Western Cape secretary Barry Stemmet said the company had been refusing to meet the union face-to-face, communicating only by faxes, and that it last week brought the issue of renegotiating the national recognition agreement into the dispute.
The boycott leaflet says Simba bosses are ”still living in the apartheid and slave era”.
Simba’s human relations director Juba Mashaba was in a management meeting and not immediately available for comment. – Sapa