Workers at M-Tec in Vereeniging are losing patience with their management’s slow implementation of their employment equity plan.
M-Tec is 51% owned by black empowerment company, Malesela, while South Koreans own the remaining 49%.
Negotiated way back in 2000, the employment equity plan, according to Numsa shop steward, Bethuel Matekane, sought to combine issues of employment equity with skills development.
But soon after the human resources manager resigned. Thereafter, the newly employed industrial relations manager, “did something outside of the plan,” says Matekane.
Workers allege that management defied the plan by filling vacancies with outside people and providing in-plant training that did not advance workers’ career paths. This despite failed attempts to set up a training committee.
Even so, management has sought the union’s signature on its workplace skills plan so that it can reclaim grants from the Merseta. So far, shop stewards have refused to sign.
Relations with management have soured since 2002, when chairperson of M-Tec, Joe Madungandaba, allegedly told workers that, he “doesn’t care whether the trade union is there.” Madungandaba also allegedly accused “people who are not educated” of wanting to take people out of their positions – a situation he said could not be tolerated.