The ongoing strike at Shoprite Checkers is costing both the retailer and the strikers money, company head Whitey Basson said in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
”I don’t know if we pay or under pay … but our job is to balance the interest,” Basson said.
He said Shoprite was paying the same wages as other retailers. On Wednesday morning 14% of the Shoprite workforce did not report for work, Basson said.
”We don’t really want to talk about this in the media because a lot of people are involved and it is political.”
He denied that company negotiators had stormed out of a meeting with the unions at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration’s offices.
”It is a difficult situation … I don’t know how the negotiators work.”
Basson was presenting the Shoprite group’s financial results in Bryanston in Johannesburg.
In the 2006 financial year the group’s trading profit was up 21% and the gross profit achieved was 20,3%. — Sapa