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31 May, 2010
State-run electric power utility Eskom got a court intervention last week preventing South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from striking. The order came on the eve of a mass demonstration by NUM at the company’s headquarters in MegaWatt Park, Johannesburg, on 26 May.
The strike by NUM’s 16,000 members at Eskom was supposed to begin that same day. The company has reneged on an agreement reached last summer that increased housing allowances would be put into effect by late in 2009. Eskom also has recanted over installing full-time safety representatives. A further demand by NUM is that shop stewards be given training and allowed to represent workers on issues before South Africa’s Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration (CCMA).
Meanwhile, the utility dumped salt in the wounds of utility workers in the final round of a three-session set of 2010 wage talks. On Friday, 28 May, Eskom offered workers a paltry 3.5% wage increase, far below South Africa’s inflation index.
The proposed increase was intended as part of a three-year labour agreement. “This is a serious insult to workers who are classified as essential but treated like dirt,” stated NUM Energy Sector Coordinator Job Matsepe.
A South African labour court ruled late on 25 May that “Eskom is an essential service and employees of an organisation classified as such are prohibited from taking part in industrial action.”
A strike was averted last year when Eskom, the NUM, and two other unions agreed to refer the housing allowance to a task team that would meet and make the increase by 1 December 2009. That did not happen. All three unions seek a R5,000 (US$654) housing allowance. “We have discovered that referring matters to a task team is an Eskom delay tactic,” said Num spokesman Lesibo Seshoka.
At NUM’s National Central Committee meeting early in May, leadership came out strongly against privatisation of any portion of power generating plants or other state-owned assets.