Numsa Statement on the latest developments on the Automobile Strike
20 August 2013
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) calls on the intransigent Automobile Manufacturers Employer's Organization (AMEO) to fully concede to workers' demands in the industry's National Bargaining Forum (NBF). Workers decided to embark on an indefinite strike as a means of the last resort after everything else failed in order to persuade the filthy rich global bosses to revise their offer and come back to the negotiation table.
The tens of thousands of NUMSA members spread across all seven major automobile corporations and two medium and heavy vehicles assemblers have crippled and halted production in Pretoria where the industry is concentrated and in Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London. Production is not moving as a result of our members' tactical position to engage in a strike action and employers should shoulder the blame due to their greediness and refusal to concede to workers' demands.
We are currently busy preparing to take the battle to the employers' doorsteps in the form of marches and demonstrations, starting from next week. Our doors remain open for negotiations.
The workers' demands in the automotive industry's NBF are consistent with the Living Wage Campaign of our beloved federation, COSATU, which is informed by the fact that the industry's is the leading manufacturing industry globally and in South Africa. The automotive industry is generating mountainous reserves of wealth but is accumulated privately through dividends among shareholders and sky-high salaries for the bosses while workers are told about average inflation and have to contend with the escalating cost of basic services, accompanied by their meager, racialised and gendered poverty wages.
There are workers employed in the industry who live in shacks and informal settlements, coupled with overheating reliance on the state because their wages are insufficient to afford decent housing and other basic necessities. Over 20% on average of workers' disposable incomes is liquidated by the cost of transport because of the persisting legacy of apartheid social engineering and its settlement patterns which have ensured that Africans in particular and black people in general live in the outer most orbiting spaces, far located from the centers where economic activities are concentrated.
The cost of belonging to the employment condition of medical aid is unbearable and unendingly rising. Workers' take home pay quickly evaporates on the pay day before knockoff time because of the high levels of indebtedness that prevail as a forced mechanism to compensate for meager wages. As and when there is short time workers are not being paid whereas pay for temporary layoff is close to nothing.
Our core demands in the automotive industry NBF negotiations are thus reasonable, and include a conservative 14% wage increases across the board, 100% payment for short time and temporary layoff, a housing subsidy of only R750, and a transport allowance of R125 per week. The workers demand equal pay for work of equal value, and therefore equalization of pay rates. In particular this involves the extension to other companies in the industry of a R3.22 that is being paid at Toyota South Africa in order to correct distortions to the industry's wage model.
We refuse to be threatened by the seven major automobile manufacturers organized under AMEO and companies such as UD Trucks, Man Trucks and Bus, that they will shift production elsewhere because our demands are unrealistic.
We refuse to be treated like cheap laborers, amidst the triple crisis of poverty, unemployment and inequality faced by workers in our country. As workers we deserve better wages in the interest of our children and youth who are at the receiving end of the capitalist brutality and barbarity.
Statement issued by Castro Ngobese, NUMSA National Spokesperson, August 20 2013
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
