The Labour Court has granted bus operators an interdict to prevent their employees joining a threatened sympathy strike with security guards, the South African Bus Employers’ Association (Sabea) said on Wednesday.
Sabea president Barry Gie said the interdict was handed down in Cape Town on Wednesday morning.
The court action followed a call by the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu), which also organises in the security sector, for secondary strikes starting on Friday.
”The court granted an interim interdict declaring the threatened strike unlawful and, therefore, unprotected,” Gie said.
”Sabea argued that the nature and extent of a secondary strike in the road passenger transport industry would be unreasonable in relation to the possible direct or indirect influence it, or its members, could bring to bear on employers or employer organisations in the security sector.”
Gie said Sabea — which represents all the major bus operators in South Africa, including Johannesburg’s Putco and Cape Town’s Golden Arrow — trusts that Satawu will abide by the interdict.
The return date for the interdict is July 31.
Earlier on Wednesday, Satawu confirmed that strikes in solidarity with the guards — who have been on strike since March 23 — will start on Friday.
”Satawu issued notices in terms of Section 66 of the LRA [Labour Relations Act] to all employer associations and Transnet on May 24 2006.
”This now puts Satawu in position to take all other sectors out on strike on June 2 2006 commencing at first shift between 4am and 6am,” Satawu general secretary Randall Howard said.
He said workers in the retail sector, truck and bus drivers, port workers, Transnet employees, tollgate workers and contract cleaning employees will join the strike. Some of these are Satawu members, and some belong to other Congress of South African Trade Union affiliates.
”This is an integral part of our intensification strategy to force the security bosses back to the negotiating table.
”On June 2, all our shop-steward committees will convene special meetings with their management and hand over letters demanding that their employers make direct contact with the security bosses within 12 hours, imploring them to return to the table, failing which … their own business and operations will become disrupted as a result of solidarity action by all other Satawu members.
”Their employers must provide proof that they had made contact and indicate responses.
”This will also include the demand that scab labour not be used in any of the operations in all our sectors and termination of contracts where necessary,” Howard said.
In addition, lunchtime demonstrations will be held to mobilise for a separate one-day secondary strike planned for next week.
”Satawu intends to call a one-day general secondary strike next week, pulling out all its sectors across the country supported by Cosatu and its affiliates in order to induce a settlement favourable to its members through negotiations and an agreement,” he said.
Multinational companies such as ADT, Chubb, Bidvest (which owns Magnum Shield) and Group Four Securicor that operate in South Africa should ”go back home”, Howard said. — Sapa