Court Victory For SA's Power Workers; Shares Drop for Mining Firms

South Africa's national power utility Eskom has no right to fix wage increases unilaterally, the Labour Court in Johannesburg has ruled.

The verdict is a signal victory for the country's electricity unions, who launched a nationwide strike on Tuesday after Eskom attempted to impose wage hikes lower than those sought by the unions.

 

Eskom wanted to unilaterally implement pay increases of between 7 and 9 percent. The unions say these rises would not be enough even to maintain the electricity workers' meagre purchasing power, and would "lead to serious poverty and misery." The electricity unions are demanding 11 percent for the lowest-paid workers and 9 percent for the highest-paid.

In another significant legal move, Eskom yesterday withdrew an application for a court order restraining workers involved in "minimum essential service" electricity provision from joining the strike. One of the unions involved, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), commented: "We always insisted that the company's urgent application was irresponsible and unnecessary in the light of the unions' written undertaking that the workers in the essential services will not participate in the strike action. We are now vindicated and feel victorious that the matter has been withdrawn. The company should not play double standards but must concentrate on resolving the issue of wages rather than focusing on court interdicts."

So far, though, Eskom has made little real effort to end the dispute. As the unions have repeatedly pointed out, the strike could have been avoided altogether if Eskom had sent competent senior managers to this year's bargaining round. Instead, it used junior executives who had little real authority to negotiate.

Eskom has still not got the message. During an attempted conciliation session yesterday, the company's attitude remained the same.

The session "failed dismally," a clearly irritated NUMSA said, because "the company was not taking the unions seriously. The company requested a caucus after the trade unions presented their proposals at 14H30. The junior negotiators of the company went to the caucus for 5 hours and came back to the plenary insisting that they still do not have the mandate and would not reciprocate on our demands. The meeting ended without a settlement. The biggest question that everyone should ask is, what is it that they were caucusing about for 5 hours?"

Conciliation bids are due to continue today, but the unions insist that, if the talks are to succeed, Eskom will have to bring in some real negotiators. "We believe that the essence of any wage negotiations is on compromises in order to break the deadlock," the unions state, "and such talks should be based on fairness, transparency and proper vision to deal with sensitive issues. This is critical, in order to ensure a speedy resolution to the strike action. The Eskom junior negotiators have not been properly orientated to wage negotiations because they are not prioritising the matter under dispute."

The Eskom strike remained solid yesterday. The unions reported "overwhelming support from the majority of the workers with a turnout of 90 percent. Protest marches were held at different cities and towns throughout the country, with thousands of workers taking part in the action. Memorandums were handed to Eskom head office and regional offices."

Again, Eskom showed a remarkably poor grasp of human relations. A middle-ranking manager was delegated to receive the main petition. Seeing this as an insult, union members occupied Eskom's offices until company chairman Ruel Khoza deigned to fetch the memo in person.

The nationwide protests were peaceful. The only incident occurred when police teargassed demonstrators at a power station in the province of Mpumalanga as Eskom attempted to bring in strikebreakers. "The police must learn that they do not have to interfere in legal strike action," NUMSA commented.

Two of the main unions involved in the power strike, NUMSA and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), are affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).

The ICEM has declared full solidarity with the South African power workers, and with the country's miners, who have given the NUM a massive mandate for strike action over a wage claim and other issues (details in ICEM UPDATE 46/2001).

Some mining companies have finally met the union's demands in full, but the NUM yesterday issued strike notices to the three most recalcitrant coalmining employers - Ingwe, Eyesizwe and Anglocoal.

Ingwe is owned by mining multinational Billiton, whose share price fell by 4.19 percent on the Johannesburg stock exchange following yesterday afternoon's NUM announcement.

Anglo American, owner of Anglocoal, fared even worse. By the end of trading yesterday, its share price had plummeted by 8.18 percent.

Talks with the mining employers, particularly the gold producers, are scheduled to resume tomorrow.