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Business Times writes that unions are preparing for the worst as businesses warn that the worsening load-shedding crisis could force them to cut shifts, forego wage hikes and even slash jobs.
According to union and employer stakeholders, the escalating energy crisis will probably deal a bigger blow to business and employment than the national Covid lockdown did in 2020. Solidarity general secretary Gideon du Plessis reports that employers have told the union that load-shedding and higher electricity tariffs meant they had to curb or cancel wage hikes and possibly retrench workers. He advised that the union had established an internal recruitment company to assist its members for free to find new jobs if they were retrenched. Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla indicated: “We anticipate that if nothing changes [in terms of load-shedding], there will be attempts to retrench. In the meeting we had with the president as labour federations, we demanded a joint meeting between the government, labour and employer associations to discuss and adopt a moratorium on retrenchments over load-shedding and focus on finding an urgent solution.” Cosatu general secretary Solly Phetoe pointed out that load-shedding affected workers as well as employers and indicated that “employers using the energy crisis to reduce workers is not something Cosatu would agree to.” Mametlwe Sebei of the General Industrial Workers Union of SA pointed out that sectors in which the union organised had not recovered from the Covid lockdown. “We were actually dealing with retrenchments for the past three years and it has been getting worse. The issue of load-shedding was a feature in many of these retrenchments. In the industries where we organised, they were heavily affected by Covid-19, but the reason they have not reopened is load-shedding, despite the relaxation of the lockdown,” said Sebei. He indicated that intensified load-shedding meant workers had to work odd hours and were not compensated for the times when power cuts halted operations, because companies said they could not pay wages for periods of zero production.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Khulekani Magubane & Dineo Faku at Business Times (subscriber access only)
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page