Trade union Solidarity will meet with the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) on Wednesday in order to discuss which line of protest action they will embark upon in the metal and engineering industry.
All six trade unions in the local metal and engineering industry are now in dispute with the Steel and Engineering Industry Federation of South Africa (Seifsa) over key issues on the bargaining table.
Seifsa on Monday stated that attempts to resolve the dispute at a meeting held in Johannesburg were unsuccessful.
The dispute revolves around wage increases for the second year of the proposed two-year agreement and a demand for additional family responsibility leave for workers.
According to Seifsa the trade unions are also insisting that employers place further restrictions on the use of labour broker employees.
The employers, however, did not agree to these demands.
Monday’s meeting ended with the unions requesting the bargaining council to issue a certificate stating that the dispute remained unresolved, thereby opening the way for potential strike and lock-out action.
The unions are expected to meet on Wednesday and will report back to employers on the outcome of this meeting. No further meeting between the parties has been scheduled at this stage.
The wage talks cover 230 000 workers in the steel and engineering sector of the economy.
Solidarity last week met with the employers, which are party to the Metal & Engineering Industry Bargaining Council, to discuss the dispute.
Both Solidarity and Numsa declared a dispute after negotiations ended in a deadlock.
Solidarity said it was happy with the wage increase of an average between 9,5% and 10,5% for the first year, but differed with the proposed model for the second year.
Solidarity spokesperson Kallie Kriel said the employers demanded that negotiations for the second year must only be reopened if the CPIX fell below 4%.
The trade union wants negotiations to reopen if the CPIX moves below 6% and also demands an increase of CPIX +2% for the second year, while the employers have not yet met this demand.
Last week the employer federation increased its wage offer to 10,5% for the lowest paid workers and 9,5% for the highest paid workers.
However, Numsa believes, that while an improvement on previous offers, this was not good enough.
Numsa on Monday said around 230 000 workers belonging to it in the steel and engineering industry would be mobilised for a strike action within two weeks.
It added that the mediator had issued a certificate for the union to resume industrial action and later this week the union will serve Seifsa 48 hours notice of a strike in terms of the Labour Relations section (64) and the industry collective bargaining agreement. – I-Net Bridge