South Africa\u2019s state-owned ports and rail operator reached a three-year wage deal with its biggest labour union, with its members agreeing to immediately call off a strike that caused a costly slowdown of exports of minerals and other goods.<\/p>\n
Transnet SOC Ltd.\u2019s offer to pay workers raises of as much as 6% and improve housing and medical benefits was accepted by the United National Transport Union, which represents 24,992 workers, or 54%, of those who were party to the wage talks.<\/p>\n
The union started the industrial action on\u00a0Oct. 6<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and other groups later joined in, slowing some port and rail operations and bringing others to a standstill.<\/p>\n The impasse with the other unions remains ongoing, although the accord will apply to their members.<\/p>\n \u201cThe company\u2019s priority in the immediate is clearing any backlogs across the port and rail system \u2014 prioritising urgent and time-sensitive cargo \u2014 and implementing recovery plans, working with industry and customers,\u201d Transnet said in an emailed statement on Monday.<\/p>\n The agreement, which was negotiated by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, will run from April 1 this year until the end of March 2025, and the increases will be backdated, it said.<\/p>\n The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union said it hadn\u2019t met with Transnet since pay talks collapsed last week.<\/p>\n \u201cWe received an offer from the CCMA which was rejected by our members,\u201d Anele Kiet, the union\u2019s deputy general secretary, said by phone on Monday.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have a mandate to sign the 6% offer, so we will continue with the strike up until our members tell us to do something different.\u201d<\/p>\n Mining companies have been particularly hard hit by the strike, with lobby group Minerals Council South Africa estimating that\u00a0daily shipments<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>of iron ore, coal, chrome, ferrochrome and other bulk minerals fell by three-quarters.<\/p>\n That cost companies about R815 million a day, it said. Fruit producers expressed concern that their harvest would rot on the docks.<\/p>\n The rand extended gains, rising as much as 1.9% against the dollar.<\/p>\n The strike was another blow for South Africa\u2019s economy, which contracted in the second quarter.<\/p>\n Output has been weighed down by the under-performance of state-owned companies such as Transnet and power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., which regularly implements electricity outages because it\u2019s unable to meet demand.<\/p>\n Even before the strike, producers complained that Transnet\u2019s inadequacies were curtailing sales at a time when prices were surging.<\/p>\n The Minerals Council estimates that exports could be increased by 151 billion rand a year \u201cif all rail and ports systems were optimally and efficiently run at design capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n Transnet\u2019s offer to pay workers raises of as much as 6% and improve housing and medical benefits was accepted by the United National Transport Union,.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":407598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[81462,67332,82035,10248,81825],"class_list":["post-464995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-ports","tag-rail","tag-south-african-transport-and-allied-workers-union","tag-transnet","tag-united-national-transport-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":464997,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464995\/revisions\/464997"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Backdated Increases<\/h3>\n
Now read: Eskom hired 18,000 extra workers in 10 years and can\u2019t keep the lights on<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"