Wage negotiations in the car manufacturing industry started off sluggishly and at a snail’s pace with employers quipping that it would be “impossible to convince shareholders to agree on a 15% across-the-board wage increases.”
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) and the Automobile Manufacturers Employer Organisation (AMEO) negotiators began slugging it out at the bargaining forum in Pretoria last week, with Numsa demanding that management should disclose information regarding executive salaries, perks and their increases in the past five years.
“In order for us to conduct effective and meaningful negotiations for our members it is incumbent on management to first release data covering actual wages of all hourly and salaried employees and executive pay increases,” Numsa chief auto and tyre negotiator Herman Ntlatleng said.
Employers have consistently rejected fully-fledged discussions on the demands submitted and opted for the past week to engage only in motivation and reasoning with each other, saying they were not yet ready to take final positions on issues raised.
Numsa also wants 2007 wage increases to be guaranteed for the second and third year increases, as the union also sought to change the current wage model tied to consumer price index (CPIX).
The union also yearned for redress in the employees’ 10% wage decline for the past decade in order to ensure that victories gains by workers with the dawn of the new political dispensation were not eroded by employers’ demands. According to a study released recently by the University of Harvard, real wages in the country have been falling in the past decade while the share of high-income executives increased exceedingly in the same period.
Employers, in the meanwhile demanded that the current wage modeling should not be changed as it was based on sound rationale of payment for skills acquired and CPIX, arguing that the transformatory wage model demanded by the union was backwards and dangerous in that it arbitrarily disregard scientific approach and has no link to reality.
Other proposals made by employers included among others, normal payments for people not working on public holidays falling on normal working days, extension of the three-year agreement to five years in order to signal to foreign investors reduction of labour instability frequencies and synchronise peace and stability with MIDP.
It remains to be seen whether both parties will be able to find each other, given the large gaps in our list of demands compared to employers’ demands which seek to grind down workers gains in the new legislative regime and that were incompatible with their expressed “sincere desires to conclude the negotiations expeditiously and in spirit of collaboration”.
For further information contact:
Mziwakhe Hlangani, Numsa national spokesperson
Cell phone: 082 9407116
E-mail : mziwakheh@numsa.org.za