Meeting last-ditch effort to end strike

UNION leaders representing striking workers who have been locked out of the Newden Boardman Brothers plant in Stutterheim, 75km inland of East London, for the past five weeks, will today meet management in a bid to end the stand-off.

The company manufactures and packages household goods, including candles, cleaning detergents, hardware and paint.

Officials from the Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers’ Union (Ceppwawu), and Cosatu will meet company management to try and get their 113 members back at work and end the five-week standoff.

This follows strained wage negotiations which saw workers embarking on a strike and the company being granted a Labour Court interdict preventing them from picketing on the factory grounds.

When the dispute arose, the matter was referred to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) – where a certificate of non-resolution was signed – and the company decided on the lockout after giving notice to the union.

Ceppwawu regional secretary David Nzanzeka said the workers’ demands included a 16% wage increase – negotiated down to 10% – and having the company join the National Bargaining Council for the Chemical Industry (NBCCI), to ensure centralised bargaining.

“Management refused to give anything more than an 8% wage increase and when workers refused that and went on strike, they locked them out on August 13,” he said.

“Workers . . . decided to accept management’s 8% offer. But management was adamant that they will not . . . join the bargaining council.”

Currently workers earn a minimum of R3 700 a month, while high earners get R4 300 monthly.

Nzanzeka said that four weeks after the lockout, “scab labourers” were hired to continue production during the employees’ strike.

Boardman Brothers managing director Richard Boardman said workers would only be allowed back once they signed the wage offer and a basic terms of employment agreement.

“The terms that the company was requesting the union to agree to was an 8% increase for 2012-13 and a guaranteed increase of 8% for 2013-14, an increase in the minimum wage for both years and certain changes to leave, to bring it in line with Basic Conditions of Employment [Act],” he said.

He said several meetings since August 21 bore no fruit.

“The outstanding matter is the employees’ and union’s insistence that the company join centralised bargaining,” he said. “The company also asked the union to supply them with the benefits of the company joining centralised bargaining, but to date we have not received any form of correspondence from the union.”