SAA sucked into strike

Unions protesting against Transnet restructuring plans will intensify their mobilisation for the March 6 strike action by bringing on board workers from South African Airways and other business units in the parastatal previously unaffected by the strike.

And in another development, the Mail & Guardian has learnt that Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin, Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa and the general secretary of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu), Randall Howard, were due to meet on Thursday in a bid to resolve the dispute, which has been marked by rolling regional strikes since January. The meeting was brokered by Shilowa, himself a former president of Satawu.

The looming national strike action, which could have crippling effects, is expected to be supported by the many members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), to which the 82 000-member Satawu is affiliated.

On Thursday, Satawu declared a dispute with Transnet’s long-distance bus company, Autopax, and issued secondary strike notices to several business units that are not part of the Transnet Bargaining Council.

The union also said it was mobilising SAA workers for the March 6 strike.

Also on Thursday, Howard met representatives of SAA’s cabin crew and ground staff representatives to map out the plans for the national strike.

SAA workers have not joined the rolling provincial strikes — in KwaZulu-Natal, Free State, Eastern Cape and, this week, Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West — because of the recent Labour Court ruling which defined the airline as standing outside the current dispute because it was not a member of the Transnet Bargaining Council.

Howard said this week that Satawu would ensure that it complied with all the necessary procedures before the SAA workers joined the strike. This would include referring the matter to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.

Howard said he had written to SAA management this week on the union’s demands, which include guaranteed minimum condition of services, job security for five years and a pension fund for employees.

At the heart of Satawu’s concerns is a large-scale Transnet restructuring programme involving the disposal of non-core assets, including Autopax. The union alleges that 30 000 jobs could be on the line in what it condemns as a unilateral restructuring programme. Management has repeatedly denied the figure.

Cosatu president Willie Madisha said the federation was considering bringing all its members behind Satawu and other Transnet unions in the strike action.

The strikers are members of Satawu, the United Association of South Africa, the South African Railways and Harbour Workers Union, and the United Transport and Allied Trade Union.

This week the strike, estimated to have cost business about R100-million, left thousands of commuters in Gauteng, Limpopo, North West and Mpumalanga stranded. It affected Metrorail, South African Ports Operation, National Ports Authority, Autopax and Petronet. Metrorail was the hardest hit of all the business units, with only a few trains running.

This week Erwin took a swipe at the unions in a statement released after he received a union petition on the dispute. Describing them as ‘misguided” and the strike as lacking any clear objective, he denied there had been inadequate consultation on the restructuring. He also defended the privatisation of non-core assets, saying they needed committed shareholders.

‘In my budget speech in June 2004 I set out the basic approach. This was that Transnet would remain a state-owned enterprise and that it would focus on freight and pipeline transportation,” Erwin said.

‘The passenger rail services would be combined and placed under the direction of the minister and the Department of Transport. As such, Metrorail would remain a public entity. The logic of this move is to make the provision of passenger rail more efficient and to consolidate the investment and subsidy process required for passenger transport.”

Erwin emphasised that the unions were mistaken if they thought all decision-making at state-owned enterprises would be done jointly with the unions. ‘We must make it quite clear that such co-determination is not and has never been the policy of the African National Congress and the government.”

Howard hit back, saying Erwin had accepted a union memo complaining of lack of consultation and promised he would respond in 48 hours. ‘But after just 45 minutes, when I arrived at the office, there was a statement by the minister saying management consulted sufficiently. In the light of this, we think the minister has rendered himself somewhat useless in resolving this dispute objectively.”