Crucial meetings set to decide on future of crippling strike

EMPLOYERS in the metal and engineering sectors were scheduled to meet last night after trade unions submitted a revised demand on Sunday.

The Steel and Engineering Industries Federation (Seifsa) met the National Employers' Association (Neasa) last night in an "off-therecord meeting" after consulting their respective constituencies.

Unions, including Numsa and Solidarity, met on Sunday and submitted a combined proposal of a 10% increase over three years in one category and 8% for artisans.

But Neasa, representing 3000 small businesses, maintains that its constituency's mandate in negotiations remains the same.

It says a proposal already tabled by a Labour Department task team was "out of reach" of its members.

Following last night's meeting, negotiations will convene today.

The strike has already dealt a blow to the operations of General Motors SA which has stopped production at its Struandale plant in Port Elizabeth, while BMW SA has cut its production by a third.

Yesterday Volkswagen Group of South Africa (VWSA) communications general manager Matt Gennrich said normal production was planned for today at the Uitenhage factory, and the situation would be evaluated daily.

Neasa subsequently said it would institute a legal challenge to the extension of any agreement Seifsa entered into with Numsa without Neasa's acceptance. Seifsa says the strike, which is entering its fourth week, is costing South Africa R300-million a day in lost revenue.

Seifsa operations director Lucio Trentini said his organisation would be interested in the inputs from the task team appointed by Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant.

The team includes senior officials from the department and a senior expert from the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.

Neasa chief executive Gerhard Papenfus said Oliphant's task team had made proposals on Saturday aimed at resolving the strike, but the dynamics for small business remained "complicated".

"The proposal they made ... is just out of our reach. The result of this strike will be devastating...

"We have one side that may want to make an agreement just to end the strike but while that may lead to an end, it will also inevitably lead to job losses," Papenfus said.

Numsa secretary-general Irvin Jim said the union would wait for employer bodies to "consider their penetrations" before negotiations continued today.

But, he said, companies represented by Neasa had the option of being made exempt from agreement stipulations they could not afford.

Solidarity spokesman Marius Croucamp said the unions were confident that the latest proposal from unions could end the strike. – BDlive