THE National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), Solidarity and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) have agreed to a 7% wage offer from Eskom following a week of illegal protests and intermittent electricity outages.
Eskom and the three recognized labour unions signed the agreement for a 7% salary increase a week after Eskom started implementing prolonged power cuts, blaming them on striking workers hampering efforts to bring malfunctioning power units back online.
This brings the Central Bargaining Forum (CBF) talks and “the damaging, disruptive and costly wage dispute to an end, paving the way for a full return to work of all employees,” said Eskom in a statement.
“A 7% salary across the board increase for all theemployees covered in the CBF will be applied for the year starting 01 July 2022 to 30 June 2023. For this period the housing allowance will increase by R400 per month.With effect from July 2022 Eskom has agreed to re-instate the conditions of service which applied during the agreement in force until 30 June 2021,” said Eskom.
“The overall effect of this agreement on the wage bill will be more than R1 billion over the period of the agreement. This of course will be a struggle for Eskom to afford.”
Eskom workers aren’t allowed to strike because the provision of electricity is considered an essential service.
While labour groups on June 28 called for their members to report for duty, the stay away continued at some plants and the utility was forced to double power cuts to prevent a total collapse of the grid.
Solidarity, another union with members at Eskom, has a mandate to accept the deal, according to Helgard Cronjé, its deputy general secretary for the public sector.
“Following this agreement, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and Solidarity have urged their members to return to work immediately,” said Eskom.
“Eskom also wishes to urge all employees to return to their workstations immediately to relieve the pressure on the system and to deliver the service the people of South Africa expect from Eskom, and to assist in restoring generation performance negatively impacted by the unlawful strike.”
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