Beer giant South African Breweries says its lawyers are considering whether to appeal a Labour Court judgement that it wrongly dismissed 115 workers in 2001.
The announcement was made on Friday to a group of about 40 of the workers who gathered at the gates of the company’s brewery in Newlands, Cape Town, demanding to be taken back into service.
Meeting the workers and their union representatives at the gate, brewery general-manager Ingmar Boesenberg said SAB had a 15-day period in the wake of the September 3 judgement to decide whether to appeal.
”At this point in time we are not in a position to have guys start work again,” he said.
”We would like to see closure, and we will be responding in the next couple of days.”
Food and Allied Workers Western Cape regional secretary Barry Stemmet told Boesenberg the company was dealing with the matter in a ”very opportunistic and legalistic way”.
He said Fawu, with the full backing of its parent federation Cosatu, would explore ways to put pressure on the company to re-hire the workers.
”The hardship they suffer must come to an end,” he said.
The workers were retrenched because they did not meet new educational and skills requirements introduced by the company in a bid to attain ”world class” manufacturing standards.
Labour Court acting judge Pat Gamble said in his ruling that in doing so, SAB completely ignored retrenchment provisions in its agreement with Fawu, and that the workers would ”rightfully have reasons to be aggrieved by their treatment”.
One of the dismissed workers, Raymond Kopolo, said on Friday he and his comrades were dissatisfied with Boesenberg’s statement.
”We are not happy with the side of the management, what they said. They said they are busy studying the court order. They know we won the case,” he said.
He said an appeal was simply a waste of time. Kopolo said he had not found another job since his dismissal. He had been injured in a car accident and had spent months bedridden, and his wife had left him because ”this man has no money”.
His two children, who had completed high school, were now sitting at home because he had no funds for further study. – Sapa