The SA Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu) on Friday handed over a memorandum of demands to Shoprite Checkers management. Saccawu also requested that the retail chain store management meet its demands within 48 hours. If not, the union threatened to intensify its strike.
The memorandum was handed to Shoprite management following a march by about 1 000 Shoprite employees to the company’s branch in Pretoria Street, Hillbrow.
Union members, to which the Shoprite employees belong, also called on the public to support their cause and to boycott Shoprite stores.
The national strike which started on Thursday centres on conditions of employment for full-time and casual workers.
Demands in the memorandum include the reinstatement of hourly rates of pay for variable time employees and a guaranteed minimum of 27 hours of work per week for part-time employees and 40 hours of work per week for former flexi-timers.
The union also asked for the scrapping of all illegal and oppressive clauses, including but not limited to compulsory HIV tests, from the contracts of employment.
Its demands include the scrapping of a reduction of years of service, a normal rate for Sunday work, compulsory membership of the Company’s Retirement Fund, credit checks and purchasing of uniforms and name badges from the company.
Before handing over the memorandum, the chairman of Saccawu’s Wits Shoprite region, Mike Dreyer, said Shoprite deemed it fit to reward its chief executive officer with a bonus of R3-million for the period ending June 2003 while the company’s profits slumped by 20% during the same period.
Dreyer said: ”The CEO’s total package for that period amounted to R8,3-million when the company had shed more than three thousand jobs.”
Accompanied by the Congress of South African Trade Union’s president Willie Madisha, the South African Communist Party’s Blade Nzimande and the African National Congress’s Kgalema Motlanthe, the marchers were promised assistance in the fight against ”exploitation”.
Nzimande said all the parties vowed to destroy the group’s ”greed and exploitation.”
”We want this exploitation and cheap labour to end. As long as our workers are still oppressed our liberation is not complete. We will fight for your liberation…”
Motlanthe said the ANC also supported the strike. ”Whenever you need us we are just a phone call away…”
Madisha said Shoprite Checkers was ”unpatriotic”.
”Shoprite thinks they can still deny workers the rights they are supposed to get…If they continue with this… we will call on our members to rise…”
He said Shoprite employees must have human rights and must not be treated like lifeless objects. ”Shoprite must respect our labour law.”
During the march, union members were waving placards carrying slogans and messages such as ”Shoprite Checkers beware: We destroyed apartheid, your greed and exploitation is next” and ”Labour Market Flexibility: Disguised Slavery.”
Andrew Gardener, manager of Shoprite Gauteng, to whom the memorandum was handed, did not comment.
Traffic was disrupted during the march as members walked along Pritchard Street to Pretoria Street in Hillbrow.
Police maintained a strong presence.
Earlier Saccawu deputy general secretary Mduduzi Mbongwe estimated that 98 percent of union members had joined the strike.
Mbongwe said marches took place in Hillbrow, Pretoria, Vanderbijlpark, Klerksdorp, Mafikeng, Bloemfontein, Durban and Cape Town.
The strike is also supported by student organisations Cosas and Sasco. – Sapa