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GroundUp reports that workers at a Ladismith cheese factory who demonstrated outside the factory last week in solidarity with farm workers in the area now face disciplinary action from the company for leaving their workplaces.
The workers were also complaining about poor working conditions at the factory. At the beginning of the month, about 50 workers at Ladismith Cheese, who belong to the Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers’ Union (Csaawu), downed tools and some refused to load the trucks of a transport company whose owner, a farmer, they said was racist towards farm workers. But Csaawu has denied that employees left their workplaces on the days in question. The owner of the transport company also rents farmland in Ladismith and employs about 17 farm workers. He is accused of choking, verbally abusing and threatening farm workers in his employ. Part-time CCMA commissioner Piet Van Staden was engaged by Ladismith Cheese to investigate the allegations against the farmer. In his report Van Staden found “no basis” that the farmer had committed any of the acts of abuse and racism of which he had been accused. Ladismith Cheese management then sent Csaawu a memorandum of understanding with conditions for withdrawing disciplinary action against the workers for leaving their workplaces. One condition was that Csaawu “unconditionally accept” the outcome of the investigation. Csaawu’s Ronwan Rademeyer said the union would not accept the memorandum: “We can’t agree with it, because they want to bind our hands.”
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Liezl Human at News24
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