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8 September, 2010In August 2010 about 20 shopstewards and union official from Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa met in Johannesburg to discuss the formation of an International Nampak Shop Stewards Council. The two day meeting was organised to encourage networking amongst affiliates engaging with South African multinational Nampak, which has an established presence in several African countries and across Europe.
South Africa: Participants compared working conditions and shared experiences on dealing with local operations of the multinational. They discussed common strategies that could be developed over time to push for harmonizing conditions of employment across operations in the region.
On the second day, participants met with management of Nampak subsidiary Bevcan, formerly Metalbox, the only beverage can manufacturer in Sub Saharan Africa. The division has four plants in South Africa, thus the meeting had a South African focused agenda discussing transformation in the group and amendments to the current consultative agreement. South African unions also raised HIV/AIDS as an important issue that needed to be addressed and pushed for medical aid for workers.
Tanzanian and Zimbabwean participants gained useful insights on negotiations. It was agreed that in the future it would be useful to engage Nampak at a group level so that worker representatives from operations in the region are able to seek address to issues collectively. Regardless of whether this can be achieved, the complex structure of the Nampak Group in divisions, subsidiaries and joint ventures means that there is much to be gained for workers from increasing solidarity amongst those organising within the group.
However, many of Nampak's African plants remain unorganized and participants agreed that IMF had a critical role to play encouraging unions in Swaziland, Namibia, Angola, Zambia and Mozambique to recruit workers at these plants for better representation at a regional level.
As a packaging company, Nampak operates across several sectors including paper and plastics and not all unions organising in these sectors are IMF affiliates adding to the challenges of developing a united labour approach to dealing with the multinational.
Whilst Nigerian and Kenyan affiliates organising workers in Nampak subsidiaries could not attend due to difficulties in securing travel documents, these affiliates will be involved in follow on initiatives. Also discussed was the possibility of including representation from Nampak's European operations.