Trade union Solidarity announced on Saturday that its members at Sasol would on Monday begin a programme of strike action because of the exclusion of whites from the company’s new staff share scheme.  

According to the union, 89% of Sasol workers at the petrochemical giant’s Sasolburg and Secunda operations voted in favour of industrial action.  The cause of the action is the recently introduced staff share scheme, Khanyisa, which excludes white workers and foreign nationals.  Khanyisa follows a previous scheme that did include white employees, namely Inzalo, which will be concluded in the first phase of Khanyisa.  However, white persons will excluded from the second phase of Khanyisa, which will be the new scheme for the next 10 years.  According to Solidarity CE Dr Dirk Hermann, in practice the new scheme implies that a Sasol employee with 30 years’ service at Sasol will receive nothing while someone who has worked at Sasol for only three months will receive share value of R500,000.  The union has already planned for three weeks of industrial action.  The programme is due to begin on Monday with several protest actions.  It will build up to Wednesday when a national day of support for the Sasol workers will be held.  A complete strike is planned to begin on Thursday with a mass meeting of the community at the Secunda plant and the Sasol coal mines.  The focus will then shift to Sasolburg and later both industrial plants and the Sasol coal mines will stage joint actions.

• Read Solidarity’s press statement about the strike at Solidarity News
• Read too, Solidarity union to begin strike at Sasol, at SowetanLive
• And also, Solidarity plans for three-week Sasol strike over share scheme, at Fin24

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