Johannesburg - A protected strike at cement producer Lafarge South Africa over demands for wage and benefit increases appears unlikely to spread to other major cement producers in the country.
Siobhan McCarthy, the corporate communications general manager at PPC, confirmed on Friday that the company had recently successfully concluded wage negotiations.
Read: LafargeHolcim workers set to strike
Maxine Nel, the head of corporate communications at AfriSam, said it and the unions had successfully concluded their wage negotiations for this year in November.
Unathi Batyashe-Fillis, the country manager for communications and public affairs at Lafarge SA, confirmed that some of its National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) affiliated employees had embarked on a second day of protest on Friday.
Agreement
This followed about 60 of its employees gathering at the company’s Lichtenburg plant on Thursday night after an agreement was not reached on demands that had been tabled at the bargaining chambers, she said.
Batyashe-Fillis said Lafarge SA was offering a salary increase of 7.5 percent, while the NUM was demanding an 8.5 percent rise.
Other demands related to acting allowances, salary gaps and housing grants.
Batyashe-Fillis said Lafarge SA was offering an acting allowance of 30 percent of the monthly basic salary, while NUM was demanding 35 percent, as well as a housing grant of R100 000, while Lafarge SA was offering R50 000.
She said the union had also submitted a proposal regarding salary discrepancies and Lafarge SA had recommended that these two matters be dealt with by a special task team comprising of union representatives and management.
Batyashe-Fillis said negotiations to end the industrial action were continuing and a meeting with the NUM was expected to take place late on Friday.
She said Lafarge SA’s operations were unaffected by the strike action, but expressed concern about isolated cases of intimidation of those workers who were not participating in the strike.
“Lafarge SA’s main priority is to ensure the safety of both the employees who are striking and those who are not.
“The company is committed to negotiating with its employees until an agreement is reached. As it (the strike) relates to our operations, we are still well placed to meet our customers’ orders,” she said.
BUSINESS REPORT