To strike or not to strike

Sonja Vorster
The time of the year is fast approaching for wage negotiations. It amazes me that employees and employers approach this period with anger and distrust.  It should be a period when both parties can sit harmoniously around the table and negotiate.

I do feel that some unions call for strike action far too easily and negotiations are thrown out of the window.  Employees, before you declare a dispute, ask yourself if the union official is prepared to stand with you during the period of the strike and PAY your lost wages.  You are losing those wages without a chance to make it up in the future.

For the entire year preceding wage negotiations, employees and employers work together. But the minute the first demand, not request, is placed on the table, attitudes change for the worse on both sides, especially with a threat to strike. How is it beneficial for either party to deal in such mistrust? Why?

Can this period not be entered with a calm, practical mind set with the emphasis being that we want to resolve and come to an amicable solution? Surely that is in the best interest of both parties and South Africa. In the past number of years, strikes often go with violence, threats and intimidation.

And at the end, the high demands are not met. The settlement agreements are in the majority of cases within .5 to one percent of the original offer the company placed on the table.  The employees have lost not gained, with the “no work no pay” rule. The percentage increase they achieved would in any event have been achieved if the unions remained around the negotiating tables.

In the majority of cases, the workers can never make up the loss they incurred during to the period of the strike. Employees ask yourself; is it worth it to strike?  Venting your frustrations for a week or two with the end result being neither here nor there?

And to top it all you would have lost the positive relationship you developed with your employer over the years just as a result of a strike you behaved badly in. It is not worth it people, at the end of the day you gained almost nothing.