Medupi shut down after workers go on strike
ABOUT 20 000 workers at Eskom Medupi power plant were locked out of the construction site yesterday following a oneday strike over poor living conditions and higher pay, a union official told Reuters.
“The company decided to lock workers out. The site is closed, around 20 000 workers are off site,” said Steve Nhlapo, head of collective bargaining for the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa.
Union officials would try to meet management and could approach the court for an interdict to compel workers’ return if no headway was made to resolve the issue, he said.
Labour disruptions and technical faults at coal-fired Medupi, the first power station South Africa has built in two decades, has seen costs increase massively while delaying output.
Medupi and its sister coal-fired plant Kusile are seen as vital to Eskom bringing 10 000 megawatts of new power by 2020 as it tries to reverse the worst power outages afflicting the country since 2008.
Eskom’s spokesman Khulu Phasiwe said he was not aware the site was closed and that workers were expected to return to their posts today. The strikers are not Eskom employees, but are contract workers, he added.
Meanwhile, Eskom’s chief executive Tshediso Matona challenged his suspension in an urgent application in the Labour Court in Joburg yesterday, as the power utility announced more blackouts.
“The application is essentially asking this court to set aside the suspension,” his counsel Andrew Redding SC said.
He told Judge Benita Witcher that Matona, who was in court, had submitted a complaint to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration (CCMA).
He wanted the suspension set aside so that the CCMA could deal with the fairness of it. – Reuters