Trade union Solidarity on Tuesday gave the go-ahead to its negotiating team to declare a dispute with employers’ organisations in the metal and engineering industry if no new offer was received from employers.
Solidarity said that this means that the trade union may approach its members for a strike mandate after Tuesday’s negotiations.
According to Solidarity spokesperson Jaco Kleynhans, the trade union was disappointed with the failure of employers’ organisations to make any real contribution to the negotiations.
“The employers want to wait until the release of the CPIX figures at the end of May, but by the same token they want negotiations to be finalised by the end of June. This is unacceptable”, Kleynhans said.
On Monday the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) said it would declare a dispute with the Steel Engineering Industry Federation of South Africa (SEIFSA) in the second round of wage bargaining on Tuesday.
Numsa said this comes after the employer federation rejected all the union’s demands and failed to give a wage increase last week.
The wage talks determine wages and working conditions of 310 000 workers employed in the engineering and steel industry.
Numsa spokesperson Dumisa Ntuli added that the wage talks hit a snag because employers were not prepared at all “to negotiate in good faith”.
The union vowed that it would not settle for a lower increase because of government’s inflation targeting policy.
The union is demanding wage increases of 12% for the lowest grade and 11% for the highest grade.
Numsa is also demanding that the wage parameters be set at 6% to 10% for the second year and a two-year wage agreement be established in the engineering and motor sectors.
On employment security, the union demands that notice pay be four weeks and that severance pay be four weeks for every year of service per worker. Furthermore, the benefits pertaining to this severance pay should be extended to limited duration contract (LDC) workers.
With respect to LDCs, the union said staggered termination should be treated as unbroken service for the purposes of severance pay. – I-Net Bridge