Council row stalls motor industry wage hike
Battle rages over who qualifies for a seat on bargaining body
● An acrimonious and prolonged dispute over seats has “paralysed” the Motor Industry Bargaining Council (Mibco), with the industry unable to implement a three-year wage agreement that should already be in its second year of implementation.
The delay means thousands of workers in the motor industry are losing out on wage increases which, in terms of an industry agreement, should be a 7% increase in the first two years and 6.5% in the third year.
“This is affecting our members tremendously. On September 1, our members were supposed to get the second increase [in terms of the industry wage cycle].
“This paralysis is hitting us hard. Two years without an increase is catastrophic for our members,” said Mduduzi Nkosi, a sector co-ordinator at the National Union of Metalworkers of SA.
Numsa is the largest union in the motor industry, accounting for approximately 150,000 of its 317,000 workers, Nkosi said.
The standoff has heightened concerns about governance breaches as the council is yet to approve the 2019 financial statements and a budget for the 2020 financial year.
Mibco has not had a permanent general secretary since Tom Mkhwanazi left about two years ago.
Organisations represented in the council — Numsa, the Fuel Retailers Association (FRA), Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI), National Employers Association of SA (Neasa) and Motor Industry Staff Association (Misa) — are at each other’s throats over membership figures that determine seat allocation on the council.
In February 2018, Mibco appointed auditing firm Ngubane & Co to verify membership of the different organisations.
Numsa and the FRA accepted Ngubane & Co’s report issued in August 2019, but the RMI, Neasa and Misa rejected it. A previous report by KPMG was also disputed.
After the RMI, Neasa and Misa rejected the report, Numsa took the matter to arbitration. In an award dated August 27 this year, which Business Times has seen, independent arbitrator Darcy du Toit says there is no basis for rejecting the validity or finality of the Ngubane report.
“I further find that it demonstrates, on a balance of probabilities, that on 30 June 2018 Neasa failed to meet the required threshold for membership and thereby ceased to be a member of Mibco,” Du Toit says.
Because Neasa, which has two seats, did not qualify for membership, the council was not properly constituted, he says.
FRA CEO Reggie Sibiya said: “The allocation of seats is critical because bargaining is about numbers. Seats are allocated according to membership and to obtain just one seat you need close to 500 additional members, which is a lot of hard work.”
Sibiya said the parties should use the Ngubane report to constitute the council.
“There are serious consequences if this process is delayed further. There has been no council since November 2019,” when the last AGM came to a halt due to the unresolved disputes.
Sibiya said in the absence of the council, the wage agreement cannot be gazetted, meaning “employers are not obliged to implement the agreed wage increases. And there is no council to enforce compliance.”
When gazetted, the wage agreement can, by law, be extended to all employers in the motor industry, including those not represented by parties to the council.
Sibiya said that for now, the arbitrator’s decision on council membership “is in full force. The only time the award can be stayed is if … the labour court makes an order to stay. Until then we are expecting the council to constitute immediately.”
The dispute, however, appears to be far from over. Business Times understands that Misa intends to ask the court to rule on the membership issue.
Neasa CEO Gerhard Papenfus said the award is wrong in, among other things, its interpretation of how the council should be constituted.
However, “we have accepted the award in as far as we believe it would be easier to reapply to become a party as our membership in the sector is currently very close to or possibly above the required threshold … A review application process is a drawn-out process which will not provide a speedy resolution,” he said.
RMI and Misa did not respond to requests for comment.