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IT'S that time of the year again – with disputes, feigned reconciliations, threats and ultimately strikes.
On Monday the Transnet strike enters its third week, although over the weekend strenuous efforts were being made to reach a possible settlement with Satawu, the Cosatu-affiliated union which on Friday still insisted it would continue the strike.
Eskom’s three trade unions are all also threatening to go on strike. On Friday the utility’s management demanded an undertaking from the three unions in its workforce – the National Union of Mineworkers (Num), the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) and Solidarity – that there would be no strike.
The high season for strikes is usually only in late July or even August. So why are the Eskom and Transnet disputes devolving into strikes so early this year?
It’s because we are on the brink of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, of course.
Transnet and Eskom are the largest but economically also the most strategic state-controlled corporations in the country. Naturally, the managements of both institutions want their concerns to run smoothly while the global spotlight is on South Africa.
The problem is that both are still caught up in outdated labour relations and Eskom in particular finds the consequences of overdone affirmative action hard to swallow.
And at Transnet the implementation of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, which came into force in 1998, was accompanied by huge and complex difficulties. It was especially difficult to apply the legislation’s provisions to working hours and overtime in Transnet’s business units – such as South African Airways.
At the time, government regarded the act as meeting one of the most important ANC promises to the electorate – to shorten the working week and to root out exploitation through long working hours and unpaid overtime.
The act’s authors – including Tito Mboweni, the then labour minister – were however aware that the labour market was fluid and that flexibility, especially in terms of working hours, should be built into the legislation.
Special provisions were brought into the legislation making it possible to average working hours out over a month or more – so one could, for example, work more than the ordinary working week of 46 hours for a week or two, and then work fewer hours after that. Alternatively, working hours could be compressed into one working week and the number considerably shortened the next.
However, the act’s authors erred in one respect, which has remained a stumbling block in our labour market to the present day. They assumed that employers and unions could see past their own narrow interests and cooperate, at least on certain matters, for the sake of the long-term benefits of companies that are managed in accordance with healthy principles.
The calculation of average working hours or the application of compressed working weeks can be introduced only when unions and employers are in agreement and have concluded formal agreements.
Unsustainable practice
Precious few such agreements have been entered into since the legislation was introduced 12 years ago. Indeed, most employers and unions today are blissfully unaware that the legislation provides for such flexibility.
It is only logical that a union would insist that its members be compensated for overtime, thus providing them with additional income rather than their working slightly longer hours one week and having days off a week or so later.
The result has been a workplace practice that is simply unsustainable over the long term. At Transnet, as in the case of many other big employers, the consequence has been that routine work in core divisions has for years been paid for at overtime rates.
This includes the work of train drivers, railway control officials, workshop managers, engineering technicians and overhead infrastructure workers. This has had disastrous consequences for Transnet’s salary bill, but also means that employees have become so dependent on overtime pay that they would be unable to meet their domestic obligations without it.
Overtime pay is not pensionable, which in turn means that workers who earn a significant portion of their wages from overtime work receive unrealistically low pensions when they get to retirement age.
Stubbornly clinging to this short-term remuneration policy has now reached the point where the effectiveness and even the survival of enterprises could be under threat.
Transnet will find it extremely difficult to afford the increases to which it committed itself last week. To attempt to make up the shortfall by means of tariff increases would simply mean that the utility will lose even more clients and its market share in the country’s logistics industry will contract further. Road transport is already more reliable and flexible, and is becoming even cheaper.
The only other ways to supplement Transnet’s income are to increase productivity or reduce the workforce. And if 20% of your salary bill is already being spent on overtime pay, it will probably be impossible to increase productivity.
The other alternative is to cut the workforce. In turn, this will mean that the remaining workers will have to work even more overtime.
State-controlled corporations are not the only ones where labour problems are threatening to do away with jobs.
In the gold-mining industry, the latest set of quarterly reports has shown that switching off the gold mines over Christmas and New Year had such a serious impact on production figures in the first quarter of this financial year that it simply cannot be repeated.
To use a Blairism: modernisation is required.
- Sake24.com
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