JOHANNESBURG: South African striking engineering and metals workers have accepted a three-year wage offer to end the country’s largest-ever labour stoppage, their union said yesterday.
Representatives for the roughly 200,000 workers who downed tools on July 1 said the lowest-paid worker will get a 10 percent pay increase each year for the next three years.
Their union, — the country’s largest, representing workers across several sectors — had been demanding a rise of up to 15 percent in a one-year deal.
“The settlement offer has been overwhelmingly and unanimously accepted by our members,” Irvin Jim, general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), told reporters, adding that workers will return to their posts today.
Jim described the increase, which is above the inflation rate of 6.6 percent, as a “massive victory” compared to the “pittance” the companies had once offered.
The offer, brokered by Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant, had been made last week. But attempts by the companies to prevent further bargaining at individual company level meant it took a few more days before a deal was sealed.
A compromise was then secured to allow workers at plant level to negotiate or even strike over any other issues not related to yesterday’s agreement.
Employers’ representatives welcomed the end of the strike.
“We are immensely relieved that the strike is finally over,” Kaizer Nyatsumba, chief of the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa said. The strike had cost the industry an average 300m rand ($28m) a day.
AFP
