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As striking Numsa workers marched on Tuesday, Seifsa struck a conciliatory tone

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strike thumb medium85 85BL Premium reports that the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of SA (Seifsa) on Tuesday struck a conciliatory tone, saying a lockout in the metals and engineering sector wouldn’t resolve matters and assuring thousands of workers that a deal would be reached.

“A strike and a lockout is not going to resolve the dispute for us, we understand that,” Seifsa CEO Lucio Trentini told members of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) who had marched to the employer body’s headquarters in Johannesburg’s CBD to hand over a list of demands. “Agreements are concluded at the negotiating table and not on the streets or on the back of a strike. I have listened very carefully to each and every one of the demands. We will seriously consider them and we will reach an agreement,” Trentini indicated. Numsa and Seifsa, which represents 18 organisations employing 170,000 workers, are deadlocked over pay after a three-year wage agreement ended in June. The union has rejected Seifsa’s proposal for a 4.4% increase in 2021, and inflation-related increases in 2022 and 2023. Speaking after the match, Trentini said: “We have already reached out to Numsa, in the next couple of hours we will setting a meeting with them to work out the sticking points in order to resolve the strike.” Numsa’s spokesperson Phakamile Hlubi-Majola said that the first day of the strike was a success and went on to comment: “They have no choice but to come back to the negotiating table. We hope that this time they will put something meaningful, but in the meantime, the strike continues.”

  • Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Luyolo Mkentane at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)


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