Security officers were due to meet Gauteng safety provincial minister Firoz Cachalia on Monday in an attempt to find a solution to their wage dispute with employers. South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) spokesperson Ronnie Mamba said Cachalia agreed to meet the guards who were holding a vigil outside his office in Fox street, Johannesburg.
Mamba said security guards going to picket in designated areas such as the library gardens were stopped by police from entering the city centre.
This ”caused frustration” and union leaders and guards who were already in town decided to go to the department of community safety and wait for the provincial minister. Cachalia then agreed to meet them.
”I think at this point we haven’t made much headway in … finding a resolution,” said Mamba. ”We are basically trying to voice our complaints and suggestions.”
He said employers in the security sector were refusing talk. Union leaders felt this was making an already volatile situation worse.
Mamba said that if a solution was not reached the strike action would ”continue and continue”.
”Positions harden, people get more frustrated, they have less to lose and people are already turning to violence,” Mamba said of the violence-ridden protests which have taken place countrywide.
Earlier on Monday, Satawu accused Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana of favouring employers in the strike. ”Satawu would like to call on the minister … to refrain from continuously making remarks that expose him as partisan in the current dispute between Satawu and the security employers.
”This not only undermines the strike but it is also not adding any value towards resolution of this dispute,” sector coordinator Jackson Simon said.
Last week Mdladlana said he wanted a trade union bigger than Satawu in the security industry. Only by organising large numbers of security sector workers could a bargaining council be created to promote the rights of employers.
Simon said these comments indicated the minister was condemning its striking members.
Labour department records show Satawu has 20 300 members, and the other 14 unions in the industry jointly have fewer members than Satawu.
Simon said this figure was inaccurate, and was also ”pro-business in character, quite contrary to what you would expect from a minister who is also a member of the ANC”.
He said that by October 2005 the verified number of Satawu members was 34 370.
Simon said in Mdladlana’s attempts to play ”the role of shop steward of capital” he had embarrassed himself by contradicting a precedent he set in 2001, when he refused to sign a deal because it was reached without the participation of two employer associations which he deemed to be bigger than those that had signed.
”As Satawu we reiterate our claim that this agreement is null and void and that it is fraudulent in that it was signed under the pretence that it was on behalf of unions, yet it clearly was by a minority of the workers and was signed after the meeting had been closed and behind the back of Satawu,” he said.
Satawu plans to intensify its protests, and will hold marches in all major city centres on Wednesday.
The union has also demanded a meeting with the director general of the labour department on Wednesday to discuss Mdladlana’s lack of response on demands by Satawu to meet him.
The union hopes its intensified programme will bring a return to the negotiation table and cancel the April 1 wage deal with the other unions.
Satawu wants an 11% wage increase. The other unions settled on 8,3%. — Sapa