All Cosatu affiliates could join Transnet strike

Willie Madisha, the Cosatu president, says he won't rule out the possibility of calling out all Cosatu affiliates to strike in sympathy with Transnet employees.

Madisha said this while addressing more than a thousand workers who had gathered in front of Transnet headquarters in central Johannesburg. He has vowed to support striking Transnet employees in their campaign against the restructuring plans at the parastatal. Much of downtown Johannesburg is at standstill as members of the three trade unions Uasa, Utata and Satawu staging a march to the Transnet Headquarters in the Carlton Centre. They are protesting against proposed restructuring of Transnet.

The impact of the Transnet strike has been far smaller outside Gauteng. Spoornet says its services in Limpopo retuned to normal yesterday. Molatoana Likhethe, a Spoornet spokesperson, says attendance by their staff complement of more than 1 000 has been 100% since yesterday. He says they only had 12% people not reporting for duty on Monday as they embarked on the strike action.

Likhethe says since yesterday and today they are having a 100% staff complement back at work, even their services running accordingly everything on schedule with all the employees back at work.