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13 August, 2007
A crippling strike at South African refineries has ended, but other strikes by ICEM affiliate Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood, and Allied Workers' Union (CEPPWAWU) continue in glass, paper tissue, packaging, and wood products.
Some 40,000 members of CEPPWAWU have been in dispute with employers’ groupings cutting across all sectors since late June. On 26 July, the union issued 48-hour strike notices in ten different industries. Some employers’ associations settled, while others took the strike action.
The petrol strike started on 30 July and ended on 7 August. An immediate fuel shortage just days into the strike brought panic buying at the gas pumps. South Africa’s largest refinery, a joint Shell-BP Sapref complex in Durban, was shut, as was PetrolSA’s refinery in Mossel Bay and Chevron’s Caltex plants in Cape Town. Sasol, which supplies 40% of South Africa’s fuel and petrochemicals, found its operations undermanned and was effectively down.
CEPPWAWU negotiators were called into talks late on 6 August by the nation’s conciliatory agency and the National Petroleum Employers’ Association. The strike ended the next day. Bosses had moved a half-percent increase proposed for January 2008 to 1 July of this year, and an 8.5% wage increase was agreed to. CEPPWAWU made other gains, as well, including maternity leave improvements and added payment for public holidays as a provision to the 40-hour work week.
The effects of some of the other strikes cut across industry divides. From the drug industry to building materials, delays and shortages of products or packaging for those products was growing daily.
On 30 July, some 3,000 pharmaceutical workers went on strike at major drug and generic drug producers, including Pfizer, Aspen, and Adcock Ingram. That strike ended on 2 August when the employers association revised its terms. Also on 30 July, CEPPWAWU members in the Tissue and Allied Products section took strike action, shutting the operations of Nampak and Kimberly-Clark.
Kimberly-Clark issued an ultimatum to its two CEPPWAWU-represented workforces in Cape Town and Johannesburg that its miserly pay offer of 6.5% was its final offer.
Over the weekend prior to the Monday, 30 July, strike deadline, the Pulp and Paper Employers Association came to an 8.5% wage agreement with CEPPWAWU. That prevented thousands of workers at Sappi and Mondi from striking. And talks in the Industrial Chemicals section are continuing.
On 3 August, thousands of red-shirted protesters turned out for a CEPPWAWU manifestation in Johannesburg to lend support to workers and their fair wage goals. The union and striking workers also received formal support that day from COSATU and the South African Communist Party.
CEPPWAWU’s ten different bargaining tables in 2007: Industrial Chemicals, Fast Moving Consumer Goods, Glass, Petroleum, Pharmaceuticals, Pulp and Paper, Sawmilling, Tissue and Allied, Particle Board, and Sasol Mines.