South African Airport Strike Goes On

February 16, 2004

Airport Strike Goes On
AllAfrica.com

    
Negotiations to settle the countrywide strike by 950
baggage handlers reached crisis point this week as the
workers' employer and their trade union again clashed.

On Monday Equity Aviation Services, a private baggage
handler contracted by, among other companies, SAA,
gave the striking workers an ultimatum to return to
work by 5pm and accept its conditions of employment.

The workers, represented by the South African
Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu), refused
and Equity issued a lockout order. This week the
strike entered its eighth week.

Now Equity is consulting with its lawyers and Satawu
has issued a secondary strike notice to SAA, Airports
Company South Africa and South African Express workers
to join them in a march to the Transnet head office
next Thursday. The Congress of South African Trade
Unions has expressed its solidarity with the workers.

Equity was formed at the beginning of last year when
British multinational service giant Serco and a local
black economic empowerment consortium, Equity
Alliance, bought a 51% share of the previous
state-owned Apron Services from Transnet.

The Mail & Guardian reported three weeks ago that
Equity is offering a 0,5% wage increase conditional on
an increase in the working week from 40 hours to 45
hours. Satawu is demanding an 8% wage increase without
the "downward variation" of employment conditions,
said the union's general secretary, Randall Howard.

"Next week we will start talking to directors and the
shareholders of Equity. We do not believe that any
empowerment shareholder ... will accept the way
[Equity is] negotiating," said Howard.

He said the memorandum that Satawu hands over to
Transnet on Thursday will include the demand that the
state company again become the majority shareholder of
Equity.

Herman Fleischman, spokesperson for Equity Aviation,
said: "It will never be our intention to undermine the
union, but we have passed the negotiation phase and it
is time to make decisions. The strike was called by
the union and they have left us little choice but to
[keep the workers locked out]."

Last week, mediation between the two parties conducted
by the director of the Commission for Conciliation,
Mediation and Arbitration, Edwin Molahlehi, failed.


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