Samwu heads for major strike

2005-07-08 16:24

Johannesburg - About 200 000 municipal workers will down tools next Tuesday during a one-day nationwide strike expected to affect all major cities, said municipal unions on Friday.

The SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) and the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu) said that Tuesday would "see a series of marches, pickets, and other forms of demonstrations in almost every city and town across the country".

The unions said: "We had to resort to this in the face of a ridiculously low offer from the employers organisation, SA Local Government Association (Salga)."

The strike came after a deadlock in wage negotiations in June when the unions rejected Salga's three-year wage increase offer of a six percent for 2005, 0.5 percent plus CPIX for 2006/2007 and 0.4 percent plus CPIX for 2007/2008.

High cost of fuel, transport

Samwu general secretary Rogger Ronnie said: "This offer constitutes a negative increase, considering the high cost of fuel and transport, that house prices have increased on average of 32% in the past 18 months and that medical expenses have increased by 8.4 percent."

The unions were demanding a nine percent across the board increase and a minimum wage of R3 000. The minimum was R2 500 a month.

They said the demand was "both reasonable and fair" and in line with the provision of the Freedom Charter that stated that workers should receive a living wage.

Samwu president Petrus Mashishi said: "But, instead of increasing workers' wages, Salga wants to decrease the minimum wage from R2 500 to R2&nbps;300."

Samwu arranges 60 marches

The unions said this would "condemn thousands of lives to abject poverty".

They said they had arranged 60 marches, which would take place in major cities such as Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and East London and in small towns like Delmas, Welkom, Kuruman and Pofadder.

In Johannesburg workers would gather at Library Gardens from where they would march to Salga provincial office.

Ronnie said members were being balloted and should there be no action from the government after the strike, further action would be considered.

- SAPA