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Fin24 writes that as Eskom grapples to arrest the impact of protests at its power stations, which plunged SA into Stage 4 load shedding on Friday morning, tensions with unions run the risk of polarising employees at the power utility too.
The deadlock in its latest round of wage talks triggered protests last week at power stations. Meantime, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) has vowed not to budge further from its 12% across-the-board demand. The union accused Eskom leadership of walking out of the wage talks, which the utility has denied. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has revised its wage demands to range between 8% and 10%. Khangela Baloyi said the NUM was shocked by the protests and added that they were “open to negotiations with the leadership of Eskom”. Solidarity said it was opposed to any protests that would disrupt the operations of Eskom as an essential service. The union has tabled a demand of 5.5% across the board. Eskom has given a final offer of 5.3% to unions, while stressing that the fiscus did not allow room for it to consider double-digit increases. At a briefing on Friday, Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer advised that Eskom group CEO André de Ruyter had met with a leader of union he would not name, and they had agreed that the wage dispute should not lead to any disruption of Eskom's services. Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said no union had emerged to claim responsibility for the protests. He pointed out that Eskom constituted an essential service and that its disciplinary code was clear about disrupting operations, which could lead to dismissal. Solidarity's Helgard Cronjé indicated that the union had made it clear in the last round of negotiations that it would not support protest action within Eskom as it respected the entity's status an essential service. He went on to say: "For this reason, we do not understand why they went ahead to get an interdict against our members. According to our knowledge our members do not form part of the protest and we have requested them to refrain from such action and respect the law and the processes on several occasions.” Eskom leadership indicated at Friday’s briefing that it had applied for a dispute resolution process at the CCMA in hopes of addressing the dispute over wages this week.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Khulekani Magubane at Fin24 (subscriber access only)
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page