Unions in the beleaguered civil engineering industry demand three-year 15% pay increase
Employers and unions in the struggling construction industry are set to hold mediation talks after a deadlock in wage negotiations. This follows unions’ demands for a three-year 15% wage hike across the board.
The Building Construction & Allied Workers Union (BCAWU) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) have both declared a dispute at the Bargaining Council for the Civil Engineering Industry (BCCEI) after two rounds of negotiations.
The 15% wage demand is above the 3.2% inflation rate recorded in March and also higher than the 4.3% average the Reserve Bank expects for 2021.
Employers in the civil engineering sector have proposed a wage freeze for 2021 due to the negative effect of Covid-19, and consumer price index-related increases for 2022 and 2023.
On Wednesday, BCAWU’s lead negotiator Modupi Maile said construction workers earned an average of R30 an hour, which works out to R5,400 a month. If employers accede to the 15% wage increase, the lowest paid worker will take home R6,210 a month.
“The idea behind negotiations is to improve wages and conditions of employment. If there is a wage freeze, as proposed by employers, that will have a direct impact on construction workers,” said Maile.
BAD FAITH
He accused the employers of negotiating in bad faith, saying they started by requesting a six-a-side meeting and then allegedly reneged on that.
“Now they want an eight-aside meeting which we have agreed to. We are just waiting on them to tell us how we proceed forward,” said Maile.
“The unions have not threatened to strike, we are very much keen to negotiate on behalf of our members. We want to go back to the negotiating table, the employers must stop playing games and wasting the bargaining council’s resources.”
Tebatso Mokoena, the NUM’s co-ordinator in the construction sector, said a wage freeze would be unfair to workers as they lost about 20% of their wages during the most stringent parts of the lockdown. He said the union, which is demanding wage increases of nearly 60% in the gold sector, would use all available avenues to try to hammer out a deal. If the parties fail to find each other, it would be forced to go on strike.
Johann Preiss, the national collective bargaining co-ordinator of the Consolidated Employers Organisation, a body representing employers in the civil engineering industry, refused to comment.
The construction sector contributed about R83bn to GDP in 2020.
According to Stats SA, between the second quarter of 2019 and second quarter of 2020, the number of people employed in the construction industry declined by 297,000 on a year-on-year basis and 278,000 quarter on quarter.
The civil construction services industry last saw growth in the years leading up to the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Since then, it has been on a downward spiral due to subdued activity.
In 2019, Group Five, a key player in the sector, filed for business rescue after failing to get additional funding from a consortium of lenders and suspended its trading on the JSE.
Construction companies Basil Read and Esor also had to file for business rescue due to a cash crunch brought about by subdued activity in the sector.
In March 2020, Wilson Bayly Holmes-Ovcon (WBHO), SA’s largest construction company by market value, withheld dividends worth R48m to keep itself financially flexible amid the coronavirus pandemic.