The position of the Merseta as one of the more effective Setas amongst the 28 Setas in the country was for a time under threat after all the unions falling under the Merseta began a boycott of the training body’s meetings.
This drastic action followed the refusal of some employers to release shopstewards on a paid basis to take part in the many Merseta meetings and activities.
Recently Delta management summonsed Saliem Dolley, Numsa’s representative in the Merseta’s Auto Chamber, to a disciplinary hearing. It alleged that he had attended a Merseta meeting in company time and had accepted full pay whilst absent from work.
Other employers have also refused paid time off to shopstewards. But Delta’s disciplinary attack angered all unions in the Merseta and sparked this protest action.
“Merseta as a skills training institution is meant to be a vehicle which is equally driven by all its stakeholders, meaning labour and business,” says Malebo Mogopodi, Numsa’s National Training Coordinator. “If the principle of a stakeholder driven Merseta is accepted by all parties as essential, why is it that business representatives do not have any constraints from participating in Merseta activities? Might it be that business wants to roll back and undermine the role labour has to play within Merseta?”
In a sharply worded letter to Ameo, RMI, Seifsa and the Merseta CEO, Numsa’s general secretary, Silumko Nondwangu, insisted that unions would not attend Merseta meetings until such time that there was recognition and agreement of the need for shop stewards to serve in Merseta structures with full pay. He appealed to employers to accept the central role of labour in the delivery of skills training in the industries that the Merseta services.
In an urgently convened Merseta Exco the parties finalised guidelines for the release of labour representative who serve in its structures.
The agreement between employers, unions and the Merseta signed on 29 October 2003 “recognizes that the proper performance of its statutory functions requires the active and effective participation of representatives from all stakeholders on its structures.” The guidelines are “to promote and facilitate releasing labour representatives from their employment in order to participate actively and effectively in its structures.”
An elated Numsa Training Coordinator, Malebo Mogopodi, welcomed the guidelines as an achievement which “is not based on asking for favours but an acceptance by employers that they have to take responsibility for problems as they arise.”
Collective action and solidarity has once again demonstrated the power of workers.