Strike suspended

THE SA Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu) has voluntarily suspended its four-and-a-half week national wage strike in the footwear sector.

The decision was taken at midday yesterday, following consultation with our striking members.

This follows a revised settlement offer received from the South African Footwear and Leather Association (Saflia), the employer body which represents employers in the wage negotiations.

The revised employer offer substantially meets our final demands which we had tabled to Saflia a week and a half ago: our final demand was a 7.5% wage increase, plus an extension of the scope of the Family Responsibility Leave provision to also cover spouses in the event of sickness, plus the implementation of a post-strike normalisation of industrial relations programme, as well as one of the following four options:

A 0.5% ex-gratia payment on prescribed wages, paid weekly, or

A 0.5% ex-gratia payment on prescribed wages, paid once for the year, or

A 30 minutes reduction in working hours, taken at the end of the working day on a Friday, or

A five-minute extension of one of the daily meal breaks.

Saflia’s revised settlement offer now is a 7.5% wage increase, plus an extension of the scope of the Family Responsibility Leave provision to also cover spouses in the event of chronic/ serious sickness.

We will now engage our members in our final mandating processes and, subject to their final endorsement, call the strike off completely.

We expect our final mandating processes to be completed in a week from now.

If we receive a final mandate of acceptance, we will sign the wage agreement with Saflia, in full and final settlement of our 2018 wage dispute.

We have taken the unprecedented step to unilaterally suspend our strike, in order to mitigate its ongoing detrimental consequences and in expectation that our members will accept our recommendation to settle.

All our members have tendered their suspended service this morning and everything went like clockwork, just as is expected from our disciplined strike army. André Kriel General secretary Sactwu