Numsa accepts 6% wage offer ‘for sake of workers’

The eight days it took National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) bosses to finally agree on the employers’ final offer of a 6% wage increase cost metalworkers R100m in lost wages, taking their losses to about R300m during the three-week strike, which cost the metals and engineering sector R600m.

In a media briefing on Thursday, however, Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim said workers “will bounce back, there is no doubt about it”.

He said the union compromised by accepting the 6% based on the minimum rate of pay because it wanted to settle the industrial action for the benefit of its members, who paid a “heavy price during the strike”.

“It is in their interest that the union does everything possible to ensure we resolve the strike as soon as possible, as each and every day on a strike is a sacrifice. No work means no pay.”

The wage hike deal comes after Numsa, SA’s largest union with about 432,000 members, which has been on strike in the sector since October 5 for an 8% wage increase, said this week it was prepared to settle for 6%.

However, it wanted the raise to be calculated on what businesses actually pay workers and not the current minimum rate of R49.55 per hour.

The three-year deal with the employer body, the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa (Seifsa), will see increases for lowestpaid workers of R52.52 to R59.01 per hour, and the highest-paid R88.99 to R98.11 per hour during the term of the deal. The hikes will be backdated to July 1.

Seifsa, the sector’s largest employer body, represents 18 organisations with 170,000 workers. It said last Friday that its proposed increase of 5% for artisans and 6% for general labourers was final, stressing that the revised offer was fair, equitable and sustainable.

In a statement on Thursday, Seifsa said a “landmark wage agreement” had been reached. A media briefing set down for later on Thursday was postponed.

Seifsa CEO Lucio Trentini told Business Day that workers lost R300m in wages, and the sector R600m in lost output.

Seifsa, which had previously tabled an offer of 4.4%, revised it to 6% last week and communicated the decision to Numsa last Thursday. Numsa took the revised offer to its members for a mandate at the weekend of

October 16 and 17 and officially rejected the offer on October 18.

During the media briefing on Thursday, Jim said at the union’s special national executive committee meeting on Wednesday “the majority of Numsa’s nine regions mandated Numsa leadership to accept the offer and to sign the agreement with Seifsa”.

Employment & labour minister Thulas Nxesi was calling the union every day asking when the strike would end, he said.

Numsa wants Nxesi to gazette the deal and extend it to nonparties in the R15bn sector, which employs about 190,000 people and is a mainstay of the manufacturing sector, which contributes 10%-13% to GDP.

Workers are expected back at work from Friday.

“We are immensely pleased the strike is finally over. It is now incumbent on all stakeholders in the metals and engineering sector to work collectively to rebuild and grow the sector,” Trentini said in a statement.

“The sector has a very important role to play in the delivery of the government’s ambitious economic recovery programme over the next few years, and that can happen only when a strong partnership exists between business and labour.”

what the Numsa-led strike cost the metals and engineering sector in lost output