Building sector, Medupi affected by strike

Published Jul 17, 2014

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The disruption from the strike by 220 000 workers in the steel and engineering industries has spread to the building sector, with material shortages threatening to delay projects and place at risk the survival of marginal smaller contractors.

The stand-off could also further delay the completion of Eskom’s Medupi power station.

It has either disrupted or halted production at five of the country’s seven vehicle manufacturing plants and the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa (Seifsa) claimed it was costing more than R300 million a day in the metals and engineering sectors alone.

Ed Jardim, the group communications executive at Murray & Roberts, said yesterday that its Medupi mechanical contract was 100 percent exposed to the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) strike. Employees were currently not working.

However, he said its civils work at Medupi was progressing and about 85 percent of its employees were working.

Mike Upton, the chief executive of Group Five, said its steel businesses had been severely affected, with a high level of absenteeism at factories and significant intimidation of the workforce to stay away.

Intimidation

He said Group Five had mitigated some of the supply risk through oversupplying steel to most of its construction sites in the period leading up to the strike and it continued to manage critical supply during this difficult period.

Tumi Dlamini, the executive director of Master Builders SA (MBSA), said yesterday that the strike had caused major disruption to the supply of essential building materials to contractors which were already operating on extremely small profit margins.

She said work had slowed substantially on sites as MBSA members were deprived of essential building components, such as steel plates, framework, pipes, windows and doors or other metal component produced by factories affected by the strike.

Dlamini said the plumbing industry had reported a critical shortage of geysers and the piling sector, which relied heavily on steel reinforcement for foundation work, was struggling to obtain supplies while the aluminium sector was struggling to supply building contractors with materials for windows, fenestration and cladding.

“Intimidation is taking place outside factories, which means MBSA members cannot collect roof sheeting and structural steel. The increasing woes of the building industry have been well documented and this new setback could be the last straw for many struggling contractors.

“The MBSA strongly believes it is time that the government intervened,” she said.

Negotiations between Numsa and Seifsa have reached a stalemate, with the federation’s chief executive, Kaizer Nyatsumba, stressing this week that it had exhausted its mandate.

He said yesterday that Seifsa would focus its efforts in trying to resolve the current impasse in the wage negotiations through facilitated discussions with all stakeholders within the metal and engineering industries bargaining council in the hope of securing an agreement.

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