Talks between the Automobile Association of South Africa (AA) and the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) have reached a gridlock.
This follows union members’ demands for a 12 percent salary increase not being agreed to by management of the association resulting in AA workers embarking on a national strike.
On 1 July, Satawu representatives met with AA management at their Kyalami corporate office for wage negotiations which include a R9 000 minimum wage, a 13th cheque, a 60 percent company contribution to pension fund and medical aid scheme and the extension of an incentive scheme to include all categories of workers, among others.
Zanele Sabela, media officer of the union said the association’s management only offered a six percent increase and did not engage them on their other demands. “Their offer was immediately rejected by us and the workers have continued to down tools,” said Sabela.
On 8 July the workers picketed outside the company’s premises and wanted to hand over a memorandum of demands to AA management, however, Sabela said they were once again snubbed. “AA management didn’t even send a representative to take the memorandum,” she said.
Phillip Purnell, head of public relations at AA said as far as they were concerned it was business as usual for them. “It is only a handful of our workers that have decided to take this action,” said Purnell. “We gave the workers representatives our response over a week ago, we have been waiting for their response since then, however, they chose not to respond.”
He added that the negotiations were complex and could not give exact figures of their counter wage offer. When asked why a representative had not met with the workers to receive their memorandumm he said, “Someone will be going over there to meet with them. It is unfair of them to expect things to move when they want them to move when we’ve been waiting for over a week for their response.”
Sabela said there were more than 600 employees who had downed tools and they would be continuing with their strike until their demands had been addressed.
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