“From now on, we will refuse to be pushed from pillar to post”, said petrol attendant and Western Cape motor bargaining representative Ndoda Mdyogolo at end of a course on petrol price determination.
Organised by Numsa’s education unit and facilitated by the Mineral and Energy Education and Training Institute (MEETI), the workshop dealt with how the price of petrol is determined.
Every time the union puts demands for wage increases for garage workers, employers’ standard response is: “we can’t accede to your demand as we are bound by margins that the Department of Minerals and Energy sets”.
Government on the other hand argues that because profit margins are determined on the basis of the costs of the previous year, nothing stops unions and employers from reaching agreements on wages.
It is this ping-pong situation that necessitated the workshop.
Participants at the workshop felt that Numsa should start now to prepare for the 2006 retail margin investigation.
“Unless we shape the terms of reference of the survey on whose basis profit margins are determined, as a union we will always find ourselves in a catch-22 situation”, said KwaZulu-Natal organiser, Douglas Mbambo.
To the surprise of workshop participants, government and employers have already concluded the terms of reference for 2005. This they did without the unions.
Other recommendations that the bargaining team are taking into the union are;
* the union to run workshops for petrol attendants on how their wages are linked to the petrol price.
* Numsa to research in 2005 alternative models of setting the petrol price so that we are ready when the next profit margin survey is to be done.