Striking Shoprite Checkers workers will picket outside all the company’s stores on Tuesday, the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers’ Union (Saccawu) said.
”We will continue with the strike,” the union’s national secretary Thoko Mchunu said on Monday.
”Our members will be back in picket lines outside all Shoprite outlets from tomorrow [Tuesday].”
Mchunu said the protesters would be more visible as the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) granted them permission to picket 10m from the shops after a court order had restricted them to 25m.
She said there had been no new developments in the wage negotiations since the union met Shoprite Checkers negotiators at the CCMA offices towards the end of August.
”Cost management is not prepared to give us a reasonable offer on what we demanded as workers,” she said.
”Cosatu [Congress of South African Trade Unions] secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi has intervened and called for a consumer boycott of Shoprite.
”All Cosatu affiliates have responded and we hope that their members, as members of the community, will further mobilise the community not buy at Shoprite.”
Workers are demanding a wage increase of R300 or 10%, with a minimum salary of R2 500, and that part-time workers be provided with uniforms.
Shoprite Checkers has offered a R265 pay hike.
Mchunu accused Shoprite Checkers of circulating a memo to workers, claiming that the retailer had offered R5 more to their initial offer.
”They are confusing our members because that R5 was tabled at our last meeting as a condition if the union sacrificed other benefits, such as uniforms for part-time workers. We are not prepared to do that.”
Mchunu said Saccawu is still open to negotiations.
Shoprite spokesperson Sarita van Wyk was not immediately available for comment. — Sapa