BusinessLive reports that after several days of illegal strikes by Eskom workers due to wage negotiations gone awry, and with diesel reserves at its emergency power plants running low, the state-owned power utility announced on Tuesday that it had to implement stage 6 load-shedding for the first time since 2019.
Despite some progress being made in the wage negotiations, with Eskom tabling a new offer to unions on Tuesday afternoon, more power cuts became necessary, while work got under way to resume maintenance that was not carried out during the strike. Due to the illegal industrial action, up to 90% of staff at many power stations could not perform their duties while subjected to intimidation from striking workers, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said at a news conference. He claimed that extensive negotiations on Tuesday yielded “a wage agreement” between unions and Eskom, and that part of the deal was for workers to return to their posts on Wednesday — a statement that was in conflict with the two main unions at the power utility. In a joint statement, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said that a new wage offer from Eskom would be tabled at the Central Bargaining Forum on Friday. “There is no agreement reached with Eskom. We can confirm there is an offer on the table that will be presented to our members, but this offer has not yet been accepted. We still need to consult with our members,” said NUM spokesperson Livhuwani Mammburu. He declined to disclose the details of the new wage offer. Meantime, AfriForum said it had instructed its legal team to bring an urgent court application “to compel law enforcers to take action against striking Eskom employees who are intimidating and harassing their colleagues”. The civil rights organisation said this step was made necessary because Eskom had failed to enforce a court order on Friday declaring the strike illegal.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Denene Erasmusat BusinessLive
- Read too, Gordhan hopes all Eskom staff will return to work, as wage negotiations resume, at Moneyweb
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