Strikes have cost workers R11bn this year

IT IS more than four months until the end of the year and workers have already lost more than R11 billion in wages owing to strikes, the costliest industrial action under President Jacob Zuma.

Figures from the Department of Labour’s latest annual industrial action report show R6.7bn in wages were lost last year and R6.6bn the previous year. When Zuma became president in 2009, workers lost R235 million and the following year R407m. In 2011, wage losses reached R1.07bn.

According to estimates, the wages bloodbath experienced this year is mainly due to the five-month strike by nearly 70 000 members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu).

By the time the Amcu strike ended last month, platinum mining companies put their employees’ lost earnings at R10.6bn.

Last year, less than half of the 114 strikes (48 percent) recorded by the department were protected.

The country has experienced a rise in strikes from 2009 to last year, with the excep- tion of 2011 when a lower number of strikes was recorded.

The longest strikes last year included a 70-day action at Document Warehouse, Rumdel Construction (57 days) and 3D Marketing (52 days). The Amcu strike lasted 156 days before it was settled on June 24.

A few days after the platinum wage deal was sealed, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) embarked on its own month-long strike by 200 000 members in the metals and engineering sector.

The Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of SA’s chief economist Henk Langen- hoven said the federation was still consolidating figures from the strike.

At the height of the fourweek Numsa strike, the SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry claimed over R300m was lost daily by the economy.

According to the Department of Labour, the most strike-prone union last year was the SA Transport and Allied Workers Union, whose members lost over 466 000 working days.

Numsa members lost 305 398 work days, the National Union of Mineworkers lost 321 598 work days and Amcu 134 064.

Of the nearly 300 000 workers who went on strike last year, almost 205 000 were in the mining industry while there were about 22 000 each in the manufacturing, transport and community services sectors.

Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant expressed concern about the logic of pursuing strike action to the point of damaging workers’ interests.

Oliphant’s department has warned that increasing numbers of strikes would not be without implications and that the more strikes there were in the private sector, the less investors would be interested.