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Johannesburg - Trade union Solidarity on Wednesday
said wage negotiations with South African power utility Eskom had reached a
deadlock.
This follows the first official round of wage negotiations where Eskom
offered a wage increase of 5.5% against Solidarity's request for a 16% pay
rise.
The trade union now demanded that the electricity supplier review its
wage offer and that Eskom bring a new, workable mandate from management to
the next round of negotiations.
"Eskom laid the blame for the poor wage offer on the current and planned
expansion of the company's power plants and the shortage of funding," said
Solidarity in a statement.
Solidarity said while it believes that the development of power stations
is now urgently needed, the company cannot neglect its extremely valuable
and knowledgeable employees.
According to Eskom's 2008 annual report, the company needed more than
1 400 new employees in critical, core and scarce skills for 2009 alone.
By 2013, the company will have to have appointed a total of almost 3 000
additional employees in critical, core and scarce skills.
"Eskom competes for skills in the industry with countries such as China
and India, and poor salaries and wage increases such as those now being
offered by Eskom will definitely not attract employees to the company.
Instead, this will eventually lead to experts rather looking for work
elsewhere," said Solidarity spokesperson Jaco Kleynhans.
"Solidarity had great expectations for this year's wage negotiations
with the company, but the current wage offer is far below the current
inflation figure. Meanwhile, Solidarity also has evidence that management
received wage increases of 25% last year and that is exactly why the current
offer of 5.5% is unacceptable," Kleynhans said.
Solidarity also intends to tackle "current problems with contract work
at Eskom".
It said the poor quality of contract work at Eskom is costing the
electricity supplier millions.
Wage negotiations are scheduled to resume in two weeks.
- I-Net Bridge