NUMSA scores victory on R20 biilion surplus for workers!
24 February 2011
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), the powerful and second biggest affiliate of COSATU has secured a major victory through protracted negotiations with the engineering and metal industry profiteers pertaining to the R 20 billion surplus belonging to workers. The R20 billion surplus would be re-distributed and paid back to current and former members in the metal and engineering sectors.
The leadership of Numsa has been in fearless battles for over 10 years as part of dealing with the bottlenecks as permeated by legislative flaws that had to be dealt with through the organs of class rule, such as parliament and NEDLAC. This resulted into the amendment of the Pension Act in 2001.
During the years 2002 to 2004, the Financials Services Board (FSB) strategically intervened and advised labour and employers to conduct the negotiations within the ambit of the Pension Fund Act, as opposed to the Labour Relations Act stipulations.
This allowed the FSB to be a major player in brokering this victory since it had the responsibility to approve the agreement and re-distribute or pay the money to workers. This led to a situation where the matter had to be referred twice to Court, and which ultimately led to labour and employers agreeing for the matter to adjudicated under the Pension Fund Act.
A Fund Actuary was commissioned do an evaluation and certify whether a surplus existed in the fund and its quantum. An amount of R20billion was declared as a surplus. A process has been undertaken in accordance with the Pension Fund Act which says that once a surplus has been declared then the parties must negotiate and agree how to share the surplus to former members, current members, pensioners and employers.
The agreement is that every member who was underpaid because of the vesting scale will receive the difference of the share(minimum top up ) thereafter each will receive thirty percent of what each has contributed to the fund (residual surplus).A further amount will be allocated monthly to the existing members to enhance their retirement value .
The fund pensioners pay-out value will increase, some of the former members are still unemployed because of the country’s high unemployment rate therefore they will get some starvation relief.
Numsa believe that this is a victory for workers as employers were not paying workers all their money when they were exiting from the employer because employers had unilaterally made the rules of the funds to suit them in the 1950’s.
The pension fund rules were allowing employers to withhold a portion of members contribution if they leave employer before completing a period of ten years (vesting scale).The union struggles fought in the 1980’s for the control of the members retirement funds was indeed genuine.
The fund has one and half million former members that must benefit out of the surplus account. Sadly the spouses of the deceased members who have passed on before April 2008 are not entitled to any benefit because the act excludes them.
Numsa will be embarking on massive campaign of finding those members in the rural areas, townships as well as in the SADC countries.
Contact:
Philemon Shiburi, National Treasurer – 083 627 6728
Or
Sam Tsiane, Benefits Coordinator – 083 461 5887
Source
Numsa Press Release