A bleak weekend looms for businesses, consumers and truckers as there’s no chance that the truck drivers’ strike will be resolved soon.
The strike has been characterised by violent attacks on trucks, particularly in Ekurhuleni and Cape Town.
Since the strike started last week, 26 trucks have been attacked and 21 drivers and passengers have been injured in Ekurhuleni, said Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department spokesman Kobeli Mokheseng this morning.
In the latest incident last night, a truck carrying medical waste was torched in the Roodekop area.
Emergency officials set up a 100m exclusion zone around the vehicle, as it was unclear what the truck was carrying. Law enforcement officials were trying to trace the driver.
This morning the Road Freight Employers’ Association (RFEA) confirmed the deadlock, and said there’s no plan yet for resuming negotiations.
The leading union in the strike, the SA Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu), said it was focusing on dealing with today’s court action by the RFEA to suspend the strike.
Negotiations stalled again yesterday as the unions and employers failed to reach an agreement in the bitter and increasingly violent wage strike.
The RFEA said there was an understanding that it would sign an agreement yesterday with the unions.
Magretia Brown-Engelbrecht, spokeswoman for the RFEA, declined to specify what the increase for each year would be, but said the third year’s increase was “well above projected CPI”. Consumer price index is a measure of inflation.
“All parties were committed to an acceptance of this deal and were going to return [yesterday] for signature of the deal,” she said.
This was the third time the RFEA thought it had reached an agreement before the unions had changed tack, she said.
The unions and the employers, said Brown-Engelbrecht, had agreed to take the deal back to their members on Wednesday and sign the deal to end the strike yesterday.
Satawu denied that the unions had agreed to sign a deal. “We could not have agreed to sign a contract, we all agreed to go back to speak to all our constituencies before signing anything,” said spokesman Vincent Masoga.
He said their processes were “highly democratic” and that they had to have support from their members before agreeing to sign a deal.
A deal was not reached because the employers would not change some of their conditions, many of which “caused concern”, said Masoga.
The RFEA and the unions negotiated through the night on Wednesday, with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration and the Department of Labour facilitating the talks.
Lawyers from the RFEA and unions were scheduled to meet in the Johannesburg Labour Court today to argue an application for an interdict to suspend the strike.
Meanwhile, businesses are feeling the strain.
Shell confirmed shortages of petrol, saying deliveries of fuel were halted to areas affected by intimidation and violence.
Other garages around Joburg were also running low.
Yesterday retailer Pick n Pay warned that it was running low on some goods at its stores.
The Star