Clothing industry workers to get full pay during lockdown

The clothing and textile sector’s 80,000 workers have been guaranteed full pay for six weeks during and after the nationwide Covid-19 lockdown in a ground-breaking stakeholder agreement.

On Monday night, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a 21-day lockdown to limit the coronavirus outbreak.

It will start at midnight on Thursday, and impose stringent restrictions on the movement of people. People will be confined to their homes, and will be allowed to leave only to shop for essentials such as food and medicines, to seek health care or to collect social grants.

On Tuesday, the National Bargaining Council for the Clothing Manufacturing Industry in SA announced that industry parties had reached a “groundbreaking agreement” that would ensure workers got their salaries during the lockdown.

Signatories to the agreement include the SA Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union, the Apparel & Textile Association of SA and the SA Apparel Association.

According to the agreement, payment to the industry’s 80,000 workers will be made up of workers’ Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) monies and employers funds.

The clothing industry bargaining council will be the institution for the UIF distribution payments to workers through company payroll systems.

The bargaining council said that the agreement had been submitted to the department of employment & labour for an “emergency gazette and extension to non-party companies in the clothing industry”.

“The parties to the bargaining council, working together with the UIF and the department of employment and labour are now focusing on the practical modalities of implementation of the agreement.”

At a media briefing in Pretoria on Tuesday, employment and labour minister Thulas Nxesi said employers and bargaining councils would be used to distribute new UIF benefits.

Nxesi said the government would not put a number on the table as to the size of the national disaster benefit as that might raise expectations unfairly.

“We do not want to talk about figures. We can’t announce something that we cannot fulfil. Our actuaries are busy looking at the numbers,” said Nxesi.