Workers at Shoprite units to strike

Published Dec 3, 2012

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Dineo Faku

SALES at all OK Furniture and House & Home stores are expected to grind to a halt later this week as employees plan a two-day national strike to back a demand for higher salaries.

Members of the SA Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu) planned to down tools from this Thursday, Saccawu said in a statement on Friday.

Saccawu explained that workers’ demands included a R4 000 basic salary for sales advisers and a barrier of R70 000 a month for sales advisers. They also demanded that “the company should stop compelling workers to entice customers to buy on credit by insisting on 45 percent credit sales”.

The decision to strike was made by the national team of the workers last Thursday, Saccawu said.

On November 16, about 300 employees marched to the OK Furniture store in Eloff Street, Johannesburg, to hand over a memorandum of demands to management.

“The arrogant and hard-line response, a common trend amongst bosses from mining to farming, where they simply replied that the demands of workers are not acceptable, leave workers no choice but to embark on protected strike action,” the statement said.

Details of the action would be released at a later stage.

Both OK Furniture and House & Home are trading divisions of Shoprite Holdings.

There are 140 OK Furniture stores in South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana, and 49 House & Home stores in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia.

Shoprite was not available for comment. Its shares gained 1.49 percent to R192 on Friday.

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