South Africa's largest metalworkers' union has rejected a revised offer for wage increases by metalworking and engineering companies aimed at ending the country's ongoing metalworkers' strike, the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of South Africa (SEIFSA) said Friday.
"Efforts to end the current stalemate in the metals and engineering sector failed last night [Thursday] when the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) rejected a new offer made by employers represented by the SEIFSA," a Friday press statement by the federation read.
According to the release, the SEIFSA offered NUMSA a three-year deal featuring wage increases of between 8 and 10 percent.
"The failure to reach an agreement was deeply disappointing," SEIFSA CEO Kaizer Nyatsumba said.
He said the federation had approached last night's meeting in the belief the revised offer would lead to the conclusion of a deal that would see striking employees return to work next week.
NUMSA-affiliated metalworkers declared a nationwide strike starting Tuesday to demand 12-percent pay increases for laborers and a ban on labor brokers.
The union also demanded that employers pay monthly housing allowances of at least 1000 rand (roughly $95) to each employee.
"We are very deeply disappointed by this turn of events. After a long and heated discussion, the SEIFSA Council had finally come up with a very good offer that we were very confident would be acceptable to NUMSA," he said.
NUMSA spokesman Castro Ngobese told Anadolu Agency on Friday that he had not been part of Thursday's negotiations and so would not comment.
According to NUMSA, nearly 220,000 union members participated in the strike.
However, there have been reports of intimidation by striking NUMSA members who have reportedly vandalized property and even attacked non-striking workers.
On Friday, local radio reported that striking NUMSA members had locked non-striking workers inside a factory in Vanderbijlpark, south of Johannesburg.
Strikers reportedly barricaded the factory and prevented non-striking employees from leaving.
The NUMSA strike comes barely one week after South Africa's Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) ended a five-month strike that cost local platinum companies some 23.9 billion rand (roughly $2.2 billion) worth of revenue.
"We just settled the platinum sector strike," Mark Ellyne of the University of Cape Town told Anadolu Agency. "It's not good to have another strike at this time."
According to economists, labor strikes tend to take an enormous toll on South Africa's national economy.
"If the strike goes on for more than a week, it will have a negative impact on the economy," economist Mike Schussler told AA.
South Africa's finance minister said Wednesday that the government would allow NUMSA to continue its talks with employers, but could step in if the deadlock persisted.
By Hassan Isilow
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www.aa.com.tr/en
