As the countrywide strike of baggage handlers enters its sixth week, disturbing questions about the fallout of privatisation for workers have refocused union attitudes towards the sale of state assets.
About 950 employees at Equity Aviation Services, a private baggage handler contracted by, among other companies, South African Airways (SAA), hit the streets last month after a breakdown in wage negotiations.
”The problem with this dispute is that we didn’t put up a huge resistance to this particular privatisation,” said Jane Barrett, national research and policy officer at the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu), which represents the striking workers. ”To be honest I think the union genuinely believed, because there was a strong black economic empowerment component, that things wouldn’t be too bad, but it’s been quite the contrary. Everyone in our union agrees that we have not come across such hard-headedness since the 1980s and, if anything, this is the kind of dispute that will harden attitudes against privatisation because it simply demonstrates what can happen.”
Equity Aviation Services was formed at the beginning of last year when the British multinational service giant Serco and a local black economic empowerment consortium, Equity Alliance, bought a 51% share of the previously state-owned Apron Services from Transnet.
Negotiations between the union and the company began in April last year. According to Satawu, Equity Aviation was offering a 0,5% wage increase conditional on an increase in the working week from 40 hours to 45 hours. The company was offering a further 3% performance bonus. Sick leave was to be reduced and transport subsidies phased out.
Herman Fleishman, spokesperson for Equity Aviation, would confirm only the increase to a 45-hour working week. ”I will not disclose the specifics of our offer because that is not the issue for us. The issue is to link our increase to certain conditions.”
The union is demanding an 8% wage increase excluding the performance bonus. It refuses to accept an increase in the working week.
This week Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana intervened by encouraging both parties to ”endeavour very seriously to settle this protracted dispute and utilise the facilities of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration on the outstanding issues”.
On Tuesday the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s (Cosatu) vice-president, Joe Nkosi, met with Equity Aviation CEO Trevor Hyman, who agreed on a 6,75% raise, including a 2% performance bonus, conditional on the five-hour weekly increase. However, Satawu refused to accept this.
”The workers are paid on a monthly basis and currently work 171 hours a month. Now the company wants them to work 192 — this is an extra 21 hours with no compensation,” said Barrett. ”If you were to break it back down to the hourly pay it would actually mean a reduction in pay.”
Unionists say this dispute is indicative of their argument that deregulation and privatisation lead to retrenchments, decreases in wages and a lowering of conditions of employment. Heavyweights at Equity Aviation say their company needs to align itself economically with its competitors.
”The impacts of deregulation in this dispute are exactly the sorts of things that we [Satawu] and Cosatu have been saying all along — invariably privatisation produces a downward variation in working conditions for workers,” said Barrett. ”The way a private company makes profit is to cut the labour costs.”
But, said Fleishman: ”There are certain conditions that we will not alter because that is the only way that we can become competitive both nationally and internationally.”
Equity Aviation employs about 2 000 workers and handles about 600 flights a day. The current minimum wage in the company is R2 850 excluding benefits.
The strike affects all airports except those in Durban and George. According to SAA there have been no flight delays; however a Satawu report about the dispute says that ”SAA’s cargo has been largely routed to the road. On the passenger side baggage has consistently been wrongly routed or mislaid.”
A secondary strike by SAA, Airports Company South Africa and South African Express workers, will take place on January 23 to allow Satawu members indirectly affected by the negotiations to join the industrial action. Cosatu has also planned a mass march to Equity Aviations head office in Johannesburg on January 23.