Unions are seeking a R1 500-a-month ”project bonus” for all workers at Cape Town’s Green Point 2010 stadium site, regardless of whether construction targets are met.
The unions believe the bonus should be paid even if the workers go on strike.
This has emerged from the proceedings of an arbitration hearing held under the auspices of the Building Industry Bargaining Council (BIBC).
In an advisory award handed down this week, arbitrator Jacobus Koopman said the Labour Relations Act ”clearly precludes the applicable unions from striking over matters bound by the collective agreement” — including the bonus.
The three-year agreement between unions and employers he referred to, which was reached in the BIBC, covers wages and conditions of service.
Green Point and other 2010 stadia under construction in other provinces have been dogged by strikes.
This week workers at the Mbombela stadium in Mpumalanga who were dismissed following a strike over wages, allegedly burned a truck, motorcycles and a mobile office at the construction site.
A strike at the Green Point stadium in September last year led to losses of about R1-million a day.
Koopman’s award followed an application brought by the National Union of Mineworkers’ and the Building Construction and Allied Workers’ Union against the Murray & Roberts/WBHO joint venture contracted to build the Green Point stadium.
The unions represent about 35% of the just over 900 workers on the site, the rest of whom are not unionised.
The unions complained that the employers had refused to negotiate at site level over a union proposal for a R1 500 a month ”project bonus” for all workers, not linked to productivity, and a R15-an-hour wage increase.
The increase would be a 90% hike in their wages.
BCAWU organiser Eugenia Peter maintained in the arbitration hearing that the workers should get the proposed bonus even if they went on strike.
As the stadium superstructure is due to be completed in September, this would mean an additional R6 000 for every worker.
In his submissions to the arbitrator, the joint venture’s advocate, Colin Kahanovitz, said the workers were already being paid a performance-linked incentive bonus.
Although an agreement for a ”project bonus” had been concluded after a strike at the Durban stadium, the payment of that bonus had also been linked to the achievement of construction targets, he said.
The employers had argued that the unions’ application was ”frivolous and vexatious”.
”The main purpose of these hearings seems to have been to allow the unions involved to show their members that they were prepared to try to do something in order to cultivate membership,” Kahanovitz said.
Koopman said in his findings that the unions believed that if the matter remained unresolved, it would ultimately give them the opportunity to embark on a protected strike.
But he found that the unions at the Green Point Stadium had no right to demand negotiations at a site rather than a bargaining council on remuneration issues.
He said he had decided not to make any costs order.
”The relationship between the parties is at a delicate stage and a costs order may exacerbate tension,” he said. – Sapa