Toyota employees return to work

TOYOTA South Africa Motors (Tsam) has obtained an interim interdict to stop the strike by about 4 000 National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) that halted production at the company’s Prospecton plant in Durban for most of last week.

Clynton Yon, a spokesperson for Tsam, confirmed on Friday that partial production at the company’s manufacturing plant resumed at 11am on Friday after it obtained an interim interdict on Wednesday.

Phakamile Hlubi-Majola, the national spokesperson for Numsa, said on Friday that the union would be challenging the Labour Court ruling.

The strike commenced last Monday.

Yon said Tsam had communicated the outcome of the Labour Court ruling to all its employees via SMS and various other channels at its disposal and requested them to resume operations in line with the ruling.

He said not all employees had returned to work by Friday, which prevented the plant from being 100 percent operational.

Yon was unable to quantify the extent of the absenteeism.

He added that production lost because of the strike would definitely be made up.

Tsam stressed that it was committed to the South African agenda of transformation, job creation, skills development as well as making a meaningful contribution to the economy.

Andrew Kirby, the president and chief executive of Tsam, said they were continually striving to create an environment in which their employees could thrive and were happy to come to work and stressed the importance of meaningful engagement.