70 000 more walk off job

Another 70000 workers in the motor industry will down tools today after wage negotiations with employers failed.

The workers, members of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, include petrol-pump attendants, and workers in components and automotive retailing, panel-beating, fitment workshops, truck body and trailer building, and dealerships.

Numsa's deputy general secretary, Karl Cloete, said the union had given the employers a new proposal that could have prevented the strike. The union is demanding a package that includes wages increases of not less than 10%, higher shift allowances and a ban on the use of labour brokers.

Employers are offering a 5.6% wages increase.

"The offer is not acceptable because you are talking about an industry that has a very low wage base," said Cloete. "Petrol-pump attendants earn R700 a week. That 5.6% does not represent a shadow of a living wage."

Workers in five of the seven car-manufacturing plants, who have been on strike for three weeks, return to work today.

Cloete said the union's national executive had recommended that the workers return to work based on a settlement proposal. But Toyota, in Durban, and BMW, in Pretoria, rejected the new offer.

"We are working flat-out to attend to the issues our members have raised at those two plants."

The new proposal includes an 11.5% wage increase for 2013 and a 10% increase for 2014 and 2015.

Yesterday the National Union of Mineworkers said all workers in the gold mining sector had accepted a new offer tabled by employers, with the exception of those at Harmony Gold.

Gold producers offered an increase of 6.5% in the basic wage of category four and five employees.

They offered a 6% increase on the basic wages of category six to eight workers.