adminPORT ELIZABETH. — South Africa’s car manufacturers have made a new wage offer in a bid to end a strike that has crippled production for almost seven weeks, industry said yesterday.
Carmakers believe most production can restart this week after waves of component manufacturing workers went on strike, adding to earlier stoppages to drag down exports by 75 percent last month.
The Retail Motor Industry Organisation, which represents component producers, is offering a 10 percent pay hike this year and 8 percent annually the next two years, though some car plants have refused the deal.
The current industrial action has affected seven plants of major car manufacturers including Volkswagen, Ford, Mercedes, Toyota and General Motors in a sector which contributes 6 percent to the economy.
“The signs are reasonably positive,” Nico Vermeulen, executive director of the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa, told AFP.
“Hopefully by Friday or Monday the production will resume in the motor components industry,” Vermeulen said after a meeting with workers, owners and the Minister of Transport.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, the industry’s dominant labour group, said it would put the increase to members yesterday and was pushing for the deal to go through.
But there were objections to a “peace clause” that would forbid workers from downing tools in the next three years.
“We need to persuade our members to accept the offer, but the workers do not want the peace clause included in the agreement,” said Numsa regional secretary Phumzile Nodongwe.
The 78 000 component labourers downed tools more than six weeks ago demanding higher pay, just as car construction workers ended their strike.
Manufacturers claim production has been slowed by 3 000 vehicles a day because of component shortages, with a cost of US$60 million each day. — AFP.
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