The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has sent a letter to the director of the CCMA requesting an urgent meeting in an attempt to settle the strike in the Plastics sector. Our members remain on strike in the sector since it started on the 15th of October 2018.
 
At the same time, the bosses continue to wreak the worst forms of brutality onto our members. We met employers in the middle of December with the hope that we would resolve the strike. But yet again, talks broke down just as we were about to reach an agreement because they are currently trying to force us into accepting terms and conditions which will worsen conditions for workers in the following ways:
 
1.     The introduction of a Regional Dispensation: Plastic employers want to introduce wage differentials to workers who are employed outside the major towns i.e. Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.  Their proposal is that those workers must earn less 10% less than their counterparts in these 3 metro towns.
 
2.    They want to increase wages based on the minimum wage rate, instead of based on the actual wage that a person is earning.
 
We reject these proposals because they will set our members back. It took decades of negotiation and struggle to remove these backward proposals which employers are trying to impose.
 
THE NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OF R20 PER HOUR TO BLAME FOR THE PLASTIC STRIKE!
 
The introduction of the poverty wage of R20 per hour is part of the reason the strike in the Plastic sector continues. The lowest paid worker is earning R46 per hour because of agreements signed under the (MEIBC), but the National Minimum Wage (NMW) of R20 per hour has caused employers to drastically reduce wages, and introduce R20 per hour as a minimum wage rate in the sector. Employers felt justified in reducing the minimum rate because the ANC led government endorsed this low wage as a minimum wage. This act of economic violence is the reason some of our members refuse to return to work.
 
As NUMSA we will continue to do all we can to mitigate against the harmful effects of the strike. for more than three months workers and their families have had to endure the festive season without an income. We have also taken steps to provide financial assistance at a cost of R6 million to assist families during the Christmas and New Year period because of the strike. We must also prepare for the possibility that after the strike is settled, the employer may embark on mass retrenchments as punishment.
 
We urge employers to come back to the negotiating table so that we can resolve the strike. We hope that the intervention of the CCMA will be able to break the impasse.
 
Aluta continua!
 
The struggle continues!

Issued by NUMSA