A proverbial winter of discontent is looming as wage negotiations begin in various sectors where workers are demanding high increases while employers are pleading poverty.
Disagreements over salary increases have already resulted in a strike in the gold sector where members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) have entered a second week of strike.
NUM members are demanding a R1,000 salary increase for the surface and underground workers each year for three years. They also want 6% for the artisans, miners and officials who receive pay.
The employer has put R700 for each year for three years and 5% for the other category of workers.
NUM spokesperson Livhuwani Mammburu told Sowetan that wage negotiations in the platinum sector, where protracted strikes have been witnessed historically, are expected to resume next month.
The union is already engaged in an arbitration process at Eskom after the parastatal indicated it would implement a 1.5%-wage increase in July without an agreement with the unions.
Unions say they have been forced to make double digits wage increase demands in some sectors as workers are taking strain from the rising costs of living including high prices of food, petrol and other basic services. They said that Covid-19 pandemic has also placed immense pressure on workers.
National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) is also preparing for negotiations later in the year in the automotive sector which has received a boost in investment over the past few years.
Numsa spokesperson Phakamile Hlubi-Majola said it is too early to state what the demands could be.
Dr Sanele Gumede, senior economics lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said unions are expected to adopt hardline stance during negotiations as workers are under immense pressure from every front.
“Food prices have risen significantly. When Covid-19 started we saw a lot of short-time pay cuts and layoffs. Every worker now is worse off than they were before Covid-19. It is only a matter of time before this hard stance by unions is seen in every sector,” he said.
Gumede added that higher wage demands in key sectors of the economy could hamper government’s efforts of growth and job creation.
“Mercedes-Benz could say if it is this expensive to run a plant in SA, we will go somewhere else where it is more affordable,” Gumede said.
He said government could ease the pressure on consumers by providing low-cost accommodation, investing in low-cost transport such as Metrorail to reduce the financial pressure on workers.
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