DATE: 12 July 2004
Johannesburg Press release – for immediate release
CRIPPLING STRIKE IN THE HORIZON WITH STEEL EMPLOYERS .
Today, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and the Steel Engineering Industry Federation Of South Africa (SEIFSA) failed to resolved the wage issue in a dispute meeting. The employer federation remains stuck to 4,7% wage offer to 310 000 steel and engineering workers. A sub-committee has been established in an attempt to resolve the current impasse. The union is demanding 12% at a sliding scale and has since declared a dispute last month.
We are on a collision course with SEIFSA because they have not improved the wage demand. We are marching forward for an ultimate strike action. The strike will end the filibustering and parochial tendencies of the employer body. We are continuing with the mobilisation process of all workers across the country. This is a start of a long battle in the current dysfunctional labour relations and in all possibilities the massive national strike is inevitable. It will take SEIFSA enormous amounts of time to realise that workers wage issues are important.
We firmly believe that the stance taken by SEIFSA to expressly reject the wage demand is confrontational, mischievous and insensitive to the collective bargaining arrangements. We think that this kind of behaviour is undesirable and unhealthy for labour relations. After an extensive consultation process with all the workers, NUMSA does not appreciate the employers offer of 4,7% because it flies in the face of steel and engineering workers impoverishment, grinding poverty, job losses and diminishing wages. In the past few years wages have not soared but labour productivity has increased.
Profit rose by 15% in the second quarter of the year. Workers in the industry have not received a bigger slice of the cake. The increase in profits has not been shared equally. Severe disparities in income pose a fundamental constraint to the attainment of sustainable wages in the industry. Workers wages and differentials between the well paid and low paid have remained the same since 2002. Any decline in wages aggravates the inherited social deficit. It is therefore spurious to argue that workers cannot be paid better. We are witnessing an increase in pauperisation of workers as a result of lower wages. Most of the steel and engineering workers are highly indebted and they cannot accept poverty wages. The current wage offer must be improved further to match and correspond with the demand of the union.
The rigidity of wages in the industry certainly does not promote growth and stimulate local demand. NUMSA argued strongly for a high wage increase that will cushion the effects of inflation, high interest rate, unemployment and poverty. Employers have betrayed the workers by failing to increase wages substantially. The industry is vulnerable to serious risks of job losses, outsourcing and workplace restructuring of which some of these factors result into serious wage constraints for workers. Therefore, by not meeting the union wage demand is an attempt to further undermine and limit the growth prospects of the industry.
(For further information please contact Dumisa Ntuli -@ (011) 689 1700 or 0829737282)