Johannesburg - The Liberated Metalworkers Union of South Africa (Limusa) has defended its decision to refer its fight with car manufacturer, Toyota SA, over recognition to the Labour Court.
The newly registered union and Cosatu affiliate had approached the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) following a dispute with the company after it refused to process subscriptions of its members. This was due to a 30% threshold it had signed with the National Union of Metalworkers of SA to get recognition at the company as a union.
According to the agreement, Toyota can only process stop-orders for union subscriptions if the union has a minimum of 30% of Toyota’s total staff at the hotly-contested Prospecton plant in Durban.
Numsa released a scathing email on Monday, accusing Limusa of withdrawing from the CCMA in favour of the court as it could not produce evidence to support its high membership claims at the plant.
“The decision by (Limusa leader Cedric) Gina to withdraw the arbitration is an admission of their peddled lies that there cannot back-up with legitimate and correct information,” Numsa spokesman Castro Ngobese said in a statement.
But Limusa has shrugged off this version of events.
Gina said on Tuesday the decision had nothing to do with the reasons expressed by Numsa and labelled them as “attention-seeking”.
“Firstly, CCMA has no jurisdiction to nullify collective agreements. Secondly on our original application to CCMA, we did not include or site NUMSA as a second respondent on the dispute as they are party to the agreement we are challenging,” said Gina.
The union also plans on conducting a membership verification process at the plant.
It is likely that the two warring unions will face-off in court as Numsa believes Limusa is nothing but a “shelf union” designed to destabilise it following Numsa’s expulsion from Cosatu last year.
Limusa currently has 625 verified members and 450 unverified at the Toyota plant which employs around 6000 workers.
Labour Bureau