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BL Premium reports that operations at Macsteel Service Centres SA, one of SA’s leading suppliers of steel, almost ground to a halt on Monday after workers downed tools demanding the reinstatement of 99 colleagues retrenched in December.
Macsteel, which has more than 50 service centres, branches and warehouses across the country, as well as operations elsewhere in Africa, is experiencing financial headwinds and has been operating at reduced capacity since the Covid-19 lockdown began in March 2020. It has also been a victim of declining steel prices. On Monday, Phakamile Hlubi-Majola, spokesperson of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), the majority union at Macsteel, said they wanted the retrenched workers to be reinstated under the same employment conditions which existed before they were retrenched. “The purpose of this indefinite strike is to disrupt [Macsteel’s] operations. We are hoping that we can convince management to do the right thing because these workers should not have been retrenched in the first place. We are open to going back to the negotiating table,” she stated. On Monday, Macsteel said it would not reinstate the retrenched employees because its business models had changed and “we are not going to compromise on these”. It said its only objective was to be sustainable “in very tough trading conditions and our priority is to preserve the jobs that remain”.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Luyolo Mkentane at BusinessLive (paywall access only)
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