Organised business on Friday urged Eskom and its trade unions to continue with collective bargaining efforts to resolve the current wage negotiation stalemate, indicating that it was "deeply concerned" at the prospect of industrial action at the power utility, which is classified as an essential service.

The Business Unity South Africa (Busa) statement was released as it emerged that negotiations between Eskom and its three unions would resume over the weekend, under supervision of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, in another bid to secure a settlement.

Busa appealed for South Africa's national interests to be given priority, as it would be "very regrettable if the success of the soccer World Cup so far was to be marred by power outages caused by strike action".

Eskom indicated on Thursday that it could offer no guarantee of supply security should there be widespread support for the strike action currently being considered by some of its trade unions.

Eskom also stressed that, in the absence of a minimum service agreement, which lapsed at the utility in 2004, all employees were bound by the essential-service rule, which prevented strike action. Therefore, any strike action would be both "irresponsible" and "illegal".

It also stressed that it was prepared to continue with negotiations with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) and Solidarity. However, should these fail, the next step would have to be a binding arbitration process.

However, the NUM and Numsa have already indicated that they would be delivering strike notices, with Numsa reporting that it was seeking legal advice on how to proceed in a way that ensured the action was "protected".

Busa said that it hoped that an "acceptable agreement" could still be reached, and appealed to the labour unions and Eskom to continue the wage negotiations "in order to secure a balanced and realistic outcome".

EXECUTIVE BONUS ANGER

However, anger was also growing among some of Eskom's 30 000-plus employees, the overwhelming majority of whom are unionised, over what was perceived as salary double standards by the utility, owing to the fact that some of its executives received what appeared to be increases of up to 90% during 2010/11.

In fact, Solidarity expressed "shock" at revelations in the Eskom annual report of "average salary increase of 83%" for its executives.

However, newly appointed CEO Brian Dames stressed that the salaries and bonuses shown for executives in the 2010 annual report reflected both performance bonuses for the year to March 31, 2010, as well as adjustments from the prior financial year, when the board decided to skip bonuses, owing to pressure arising as a result of the load-shedding of 2008.

Dames stressed that the Eskom board determined executive salaries using existing policies that had been approved the South African government, as shareholder. Those policies might change in future, given that government had set up a panel to probe the structure of executive remuneration across all State-owned enterprises.

He said that the executive bonus issue had to be separated from the current salary negotiations and indicated that, as CEO, he planned to introduce even more performance-related bonuses across all levels of the organisation.

"We have an incentive scheme for workers as well as for management . . . and I am adamant that we will focus strongly on payment for performance."