Solidarity bats Eskom wage offer

Johannesburg - Solidarity said on Wednesday that it will not accept Eskom's eight percent wage offer as it currently stands and has pushed through certain revisions for the power utility to consider.

"We need more time to discuss with our members. We believe there's still room for negotiations," said Solidarity's general secretary Flip Buys.

Buys said there were obstacles in the way of a settlement and that these had to be addressed for negotiations to be concluded.

Eskom had been given until Monday to respond to revisions, including a minimum service agreement, which the union said had to be in place before 2011 wage negotiations.

Currently, there is no minimum service agreement meaning that workers can not go on a protected strike, "Workers can not vent in the current situation," said the union's deputy general secretary Dirk Hermann.

The union also wanted an external audit within Eskom to determine the existing tensions between workers and management.

"We are experiencing real labour relations problems with Eskom... This break in trust of such a nature can not continue or else we will have this sort of dispute every year," he said.

"We want to know why and what is the problem within Eskom."

Num to go on strike

There was also a lot of frustration after it was reported that Eskom spent R12m of World Cup tickets.

Eskom has revised its wage offer to eight percent from 5.5%. Solidarity is demanding nine percent.

There has also been disagreement on housing allowances.

Meanwhile the National Union of Mineworkers (Num) on Wednesday formally notified Eskom of its intention to go on strike next week over wages, a union spokesperson said.

"Today [Wednesday] we started mobilising our members for the strike," said NUM spokesperson Lesiba Seshoka.

The possibility of the industrial action being illegal because Eskom was an essential service "doesn't matter".

"We will cross that bridge when we get to it. We have already notified them of our intention to go on strike," said Seshoka. "They cannot tie us to a tree and then tell us we can't do anything when abused because we cannot untie ourselves.

"We are going on strike and they cannot do anything about that."

- Reuters