Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant would meet the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and the employer body, the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa (Seifsa), for talks to spare the economy another protracted strike, she said yesterday.
“I believe that after this meeting it is correct for me to meet with both Numsa and Seifsa, precisely because we have intervened and when they were going back to report to their members, everybody was saying that there was a possibility of the ending of this strike,” she said.
“Therefore I have to meet with them so that they can explain what has happened or what went wrong, and look at possibilities of really coming to the table and finalising this issue because as a country we can’t afford a prolonged strike.”
Oliphant described the steel and engineering industry as the “key, critical sector when it comes to the infrastructure of this country”, and added that the strike could damage the motor industry.
“I think it is going to be affected very deeply, and this is why we have to intervene as the government so that this thing can come to an end.”
Seifsa said yesterday that it would now pursue a wage settlement in the bargaining chamber for the metals and engineering sector after negotiations with Numsa reached an impasse.
Kaizer Nyatsumba, the chief executive of Seifsa, said that the federation’s council had resolved on Tuesday that the employer body should continue to seek a settlement to the current impasse through the formal structures of the metal and engineering industries bargaining council with all unions active in the sector.
Seifsa would also continue to work with the other employer bodies.
Nyatsumba said the council, which represented the leadership of the associations affiliated to Seifsa, had expressed great disappointment at the fact that a very good offer to Numsa last week, in an attempt to end the strike as soon as possible, had been rejected.
Nyatsumba said the council felt Seifsa had spent a considerable amount of time in talks with the leadership of Numsa and had nothing to show for it.
He said Seifsa had reverted to its offer of a 10 percent raise this year, 9 percent next year and 8 percent in 2016.
He said the strike, which was costing the economy R300 million a day in the metals and engineering sector alone, was now inflicting even more damage because it had since affected related sectors like motor manufacturing.
Numsa said its national strike committee had developed a maximum programme of action to intensify and accelerate the industrial action. The regional and local strike committees would be drawing up details of actions that would be taking place.
This followed a meeting of the committee on Tuesday, which was attended by representatives drawn from the nine Numsa regions, including worker leaders, Castro Ngobese, the union’s national spokesman, said.
He said the committee’s proceedings were alerted to news reports that Seifsa, through Nyatsumba, had withdrawn its conditional offer and that there would be no further engagements.
Ngobese said: “This was neither surprising nor shocking. In honesty, Nyatsumba is a supreme example of a rented agent to perpetuate and drive colonial slave wages.” – Additional reporting by Sapa