Bid to stop freight strike
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Last-minute negotiations may have averted a week-long strike, due to start on Monday, by 60 000 freight industry workers, which would have impacted badly on business in eThekwini, halting the transportation of fuel, coal, food and steel.
The union called off the start of the strike after the Road Freight Association came forward on Friday with an offer, which will be put to the union members on Tuesday.
And if an agreement is not reached by the truck drivers and their employers, the protected strike would start, and drag on for the rest of the week, bringing the country to a standstill with a possible loss to the economy of millions of rand.
The strike comes after the SA Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu), together with fellow unions in the transport and logistics industry, reached a deadlock after tense discussions that started in June.
Satawu representative Vincent Masoga said after Friday’s last-minute negotiations that the employer group had increased its initial 8 percent offer by .5 percent.
The workers are demanding a 12 percent increase across the board. “The offer is now sitting at 8.5 percent with the employers committing themselves to increasing this by another .5 percent later on in the year, to bring it to 9 percent,” Masoga said. The union will report back to its members about the latest offer on Tuesday.
“We met employers at the weekend and will be presenting their offer to the workers tomorrow (on Tuesday).”
Masoga warned that if truck drivers did not accept the offer, they would embark on the strike from Tuesday.
The Road Freight Association’s labour relations manager, Magretia Brown-Engelbrecht, advised all members to make contingency plans, warning them of disruptions. She said the association would hold a meeting with the unions on Tuesday after their meeting with the workers.
Meanwhile, an economist has warned that the economic impact of the strike could be far worse than the recent mining strike.
Mike Schussler, a director at economist.co.za, an independent economic research house, said that while it would be pre-emptive to quantify the financial impact, the country could lose millions. “The size of the transport sector is double that of the mining industry so the country stands to lose more than it did during the Marikana strike,” he said.
Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry CEO, Andrew Layman, said KwaZulu-Natal, and especially Durban, would be hardest hit. Because the city depended on the operation of the port as its financial hub, the strike could have dire economic repercussions for the city, he said.
If the strike dragged on for more than a day, Layman warned that the impact on the import and export of goods could be negative.
“Any disruption to the transportation of goods in and out of the country could be damaging to the economy,” he said. “If local companies are [servicing] customers abroad, there is a good chance they will lose the contracts… international companies are not tolerant of sub-standard service.”
While Schussler pinned the blame for the transportation strike on the six-week Marikana strike, saying it had set a bad precedent, Layman believed otherwise. “I can’t say that the mining sector is the one that set the precedent as this is striking season,” he said. “We are likely to see more strikes.”
nondumiso.mbuyazi@inl.co.za
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