July 10, 2007, 18:15
The motor industry in the Eastern Cape is beginning to feel the effects of the metal and engineering industrial strike as industrial action enters its second day. Worker unions - Solidarity and Numsa - are demanding a minimum 10% pay increase, while employers have put on the table an offer between 7.3 and 7.8%.
Bill Stephens, the spokesperson for Volkswagen SA in Uitenhage, says they have been forced to close certain production areas: "Some of our shifts and production areas have to close because we aren’t able to provide the required components to continue the manufacturing process. It's very difficult to put in contingency plans when you have a manufacturing process that requires high skills, training and expertise. So now we're not operating at full capacity and we're monitoring the situation on a day-to-day and shift-to-shift capacity."
The strike in the sector is continuing in major centres, including factories in Gauteng. In the Cape Town area, protests were earlier taking place in different industrial areas of Bellville South.
’Outrageous’ demands
The Defy Appliances factory in Durban has also been hard hit by the strike. Ross Heron, the CEO of Defy, says the industrial action has disrupted all their manufacturing activities and to a lesser extent, the distribution of their products.
Heron says around 2 700 workers failed to report for work at the Defy factory in Jacobs Street in Durban. He says unions need to be reasonable in their wage demands: "I think the industries are under enormous stress because if one considers 20 years ago, there is probably double the number of employees in the industry as there are now. I think there is a huge amount of competitive stress with imported products. And I think one has to be very careful with the extent of the wage demands. So as manufacturers, we are very conscious of the demands have to be reasonable."
Hank Duys, the chief executive of Duys Engineering in New Germany near Durban, says 80% of their hourly paid employees have not reported for work. Duys believes Numsa's demands are excessive: "We are suffering heavily from the imported substitutes and if you supply to the automotive industry for example, you don't get price increases, you get price reductions. They ask you for reductions every year and so the… demands which the unions are making are untenable and we really can't afford them. So there is a short-term gain to the unions if they get what they want but in the long term, it's just going to bring the demise of the businesses earlier - that is what it's going to do."
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