Sactwu settles formal wage agreement after rounds of dispute

WE REFER to our media release dated July 15, 2018 (for ease of reference re-copied below), and provide the following update:

The SA Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu) has settled its 2018 wage negotiations for the clothing sector. This comes after three rounds of ordinary negotiations, the declaration of a dispute and two conciliation sessions to attempt a settlement of the dispute.

The first conciliation session yielded a recommended settlement, which our members did not agree to. It was only at the second conciliation session, last Thursday, that progress was made.

The dispute was finally settled earlier today, August 24, 2018, when a formal wage agreement was signed at the head office of the clothing industry bargaining council, in Cape Town.

The agreement covers just over 60 000 clothing workers, employed in 745 factories nationwide.

The wage increase component alone, combined for all the workers, will mean a total cash amount injection of R250 million into the domestic economy over the next year.

The final settlement involves a twoyear agreement. The effective implementation date for the first year of the agreement is September 1, 2018, and for the second year it will be September 1, 2019. Wage increases for this industry are normally due at the beginning of September each year.

During the first year, our clothing industry members in the metro areas of South Africa will receive a 7.5% wage increase and workers in the nonmetro areas will receive an 8% package increase (of which 7.5% will go on wages and 0.5% to improve employer contributions to the provident fund).

The second year wage increase means that next year, our members will not receive a lower wage increase than what they will receive this year. Should the Consumer Price Index plus 1% for the second year exceed this, negotiations will be reopened.

Agreement was also reached that time-off requests for office-bearers of the union to attend constitutional meetings of Sactwu and of Cosatu shall not be unreasonably refused.

The agreement was reached under the auspices of the National Bargaining Council for the Clothing Manufacturing Industry of South Africa. Our employer counterparts were represented by the Apparel and Textile Association of South Africa, (Atasa), Eastern Province Clothing Manufacturers Association (EPCMA), South African Apparel Association (SAAA), South African Clothing Manufacturers Association (Sacma) and the Transvaal Clothing Manufacturers Association (TCMA).

It was also agreed to submit the agreement to the Minister of Labour, for it to be gazetted and extended to become nationally applicable.