About 2 000 workers employed by Blue Ribbon bakery, mostly members of the Food and Allied Workers’ Union (Fawu), embarked on a national strike on Monday, the union said.
”We are unhappy about the company’s refusal to accede to our demand of a centralised bargaining forum that would allow the same benefits to be negotiated on a national basis,” Fawu general secretary Katishi Masemola said.
”Our members are also unhappy about the wage disparities between employees nationally … We believe that the same work deserves the same pay,” he added.
Blue Ribbon is a division of Premier Foods with about 14 plants countrywide in Cape Town, Vereeniging, Potchefstroom, Bloemfontein, Durban and Pretoria.
Premier Foods is South Africa’s largest black-owned and -operated company and produces brands like Blue Ribbon bread, Iwisa maize meal and Snowflake flour products
”It is peculiar that a black economic empowerment-owned and supposedly progressive company such as Blue Ribbon seems to exploit our members instead of advancing the interests of their own employees,” Masemola said.
Premier Foods corporate affairs manager Steven Mallach said a collective bargaining arrangement had been discarded as it proved ”not to be in the best interests of the company or the majority of its workers”.
Mallach added the company was committed to minimising any disruption caused by the strike.
He also said the company was disappointed that the issue of collective bargaining had ”once again threatened to disrupt the supply of staple foods in certain areas around the country”. — Sapa