Thousands of Iscor employees would march to the company’s head office in Pretoria on Friday to demand a wage increase, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) said on Thursday.
Numsa spokesperson Dumisa Ntuli said workers were demanding R5 000 back pay for all workers to cushion the effects of the restructuring process that had taken place in the company in the past seven years.
He said workers also want a comprehensive salary adjustment to be spread over all the skills grades.
Ntuli said the march would start at 10am and would be followed by a meeting between the union and Iscor management. The purpose of the meeting would be to explore different options in relation to workers’ demands.
Iscor employees have been on strike since Tuesday.
”The third day of the strike action brought the company to a grinding halt as workers at Iscor… continue with the strike,” Ntuli said.
Ntuli said the strike had begun well, and workers were strong and militant.
He said it was not a favour to pay workers better salaries; the company had a binding legal duty to pay workers equitable salaries.
”The union will not be sympathetic to the company prescription of wage ‘moderation’. It is our view that management commitment to resume talks with the union in the last two days has been largely rhetorical, but nevertheless we trust and hope that the company will increase the current package and stop public posturing and change their repulsive attitude in the meeting on Friday.”
He said Numsa was looking forward to a positive meeting with the company, but was worried that some managers were intimidating union members at Iscor’s Vanderbijlpark steel plant into returning to work.
”We view such act of provocation as part of the Iscor strategy to subject workers to conditions of silence and submissiveness. It is our view that such acts will raise tensions and lead to conflict. This kind of situation should be avoided at all costs,” said Ntuli.
Iscor spokesperson Phaldie Kalam said the third day of Numsa’s strike had made no material difference to the company’s operations.
He said production was running normally at the Vanderbijlpark steel plant, at its Newcastle plant in northern KwaZulu-Natal and at its Saldanha Steel facility on South Africa’s west coast.
Kalam said there had been reports of unruly behaviour by some of the strikers and attempts by the company to sign strike and picketing rules with Numsa had not been successful to date.
”Since this is a legal strike we obviously expect all the parties to abide by the necessary legal protocol and have asked the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) to facilitate compliance,” said Kalam.
Kalam said that the company has already spent over R294-million over a three-year period from 1998 to 2000 on employees for meeting the re-engineering targets and there was therefore no legal obligation to pay an additional amount for ”hardship” as requested by Numsa.
”However, our offer for a R4,6-million once-off ex-gratia payment –improved to R6,75-million — was rejected by the union and consequently the ball is now in their court to respond with new proposals,” Kalam said. – Sapa