Lengthy strike action 'stupid'

Johannesburg - Striking Transnet workers were starting to lose more money than they would gain if their salary demands were met, economists warned on Tuesday.

"It is stupid to strike for longer than a week," said Dawie Roodt, chief economist of the Efficient Group.

Members of the SA Transport and Allied Workers' Union (Satawu) started a strike against Transnet last Monday. The United Trade and
Allied Union (Utatu) joined the mass action on Wednesday.

The unions had rejected an 11% wage increase offer by Transnet, originally demanding 15% and then lowering their
demand to 12%.

Roodt said that with any strike going on for longer than a week, workers were starting to shoot themselves in the foot.

"If the guys strike for two weeks, they are losing wages amounting to 4%."

Economist Mike Schüssler agreed, saying it was a simple calculation. With 52 weeks in the year, employees earned 2% of their salary a week.

"They do lose out on income. Every week it's 2% of their income... but they may make some of it up with overtime," said Schüssler.

Both economists said it was difficult to put a price on the twostrikes Satawu and Utatu were involved in against Transnet and the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa).

The Prasa strike, which saw the shut-down of Metrorail and Shosholoza Meyl services, started on Monday.

"If the [Transnet] strike continues for two weeks, I reckon it would cost the economy about R15bn... but that is a bit of a
thumb-suck figure," said Roodt.

"One will probably be able to catch up on between 50% and 60% of that in lost production and then the cost could be between R5bn and R8bn."

That would calculate into a loss of between 0.1% and 0.3% to economic growth, Roodt said.

Schüssler believed the cost of the strike was "running into the hundreds of millions [of rands] per day at the moment".

"Now we're getting to a point where it's over a week... it'salso affecting other companies and obviously this all adds up. This strike's cost is not going to be less than a billion; it's going to be a billion plus," said Schüssler.

The timing of the strike was bad, with the economy just coming out of a recession.

"It is going to affect production figures," said Schüssler.

Transnet has said it suffered R30m in damages caused by striking workers accused of sabotage and violent behaviour.

The "no work, no pay" rule applies to the strike.

Trade unions were appealing to Transport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele on Tuesday to intervene.

 - Sapa