The wage dispute between trade union Solidarity and steel producer Iscor was resolved on Tuesday when the two parties signed a wage agreement.
The agreement includes, among other things, a three-year moratorium on forced retrenchments.
The agreement comes after a month-long wage dispute between Solidarity and Iscor that would, in all likelihood, have resulted in a strike next week.
The trade union has been at loggerheads with the steel giant over its retrenchment policy for more than a year.
Solidarity also opposed the LNM take-over of Iscor in the light of LNM’s history of retrenchments worldwide.
“The moratorium on retrenchments means a victory for employees, shareholders, the community and the Iscor management in the long term,” said Solidarity chief executive Flip Buys.
“Today job security is as material as, if not more meaningful than a wage increase. That is why we found it so important that a moratorium on retrenchments had to form part of the wage package.
“A constant threat of retrenchment harms productivity and means that workers are tense and insecure practically all the time. We hope that Iscor’s decision will also send a message to other employers,” Buys said.
The three-year wage agreement makes provision for a wage increase of 8,5%, of which 5% comprises a fixed element and 3,5% a variable element.
The battle between Iscor and Solidarity about a moratorium on retrenchments began approximately a year ago, when Solidarity appointed a commission to look at Iscor’s grounds for retrenching workers.
The commission found that Iscor did not have a reasonable rationale for dismissing workers, prompting the trade union to ask the company to cease retrenchments.
Solidarity also actively opposed the Iscor take-over by LNM’s Lakshmi Mittal.
The trade union argued that Mittal has a history of retrenchments all over the world. Solidarity asked Mittal to prove his commitment to South Africa by placing a moratorium on retrenchments.
During talks between Solidarity and Lakshmi Mittal, agreement was also reached on further discussions to address Solidarity’s objections to LNM. — I-Net Bridge