Kusile workers on a protest action

The workers at Kusile Power Station recently embarked on a protest action.

The protest action by the workers who are members of a union stated that they engage in a protest action on Wednesday, May 16 after some disagreement with the Kusile Power Station Project Management.

One of the workers at Kusile Power Station who was allegedly shot by security guards at the plant during a protest action.

The workers said that they had an agreement with the management that expatriates who came to work at Kusile, will only work as artisans (welders) from Unit 1 to Unit 3 but now they are working in all the six units. Another agreement according to the workers was that the expatriates will transfer their skills to South Africans but that was not done.

They further said that an audit of skills transfer was done through the Project Management Institute (PMI) and showed that no skills has been transferred to South Africans and that in some instances South Africans are more skilled than the expatriates.

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“Management does not honour our agreements or policies signed. We are no longer consulted as workers about issues affecting us but they are imposed on us and the management left us with no choice but to engage on the protest action. We also agreed with the management that when it was time for retrenchments, it will have to start with the expatriates, then South Africans. We now have South Africans who have been retrenched and the expatriates have been retained. This will lead to the already high number of unemployment in the country,” said the workers.

The workers also stated that the expatriates are paid three times more than what the South Africans are being paid which is also one of the problems which led to the protest action.

The workers also said they are not happy on how the expatriates are being given ‘special’ treatment and they are protected by the security guards which led to one of the workers being shot in a leg and was admitted at a hospital with leg injuries.

Eskom issued a statement related to the protest action. It said that Eskom’s internal transfers are without salary increase and that on Thursday, May 17, the internal job advertisements are geared towards recruiting staff within Eskom for available posts across all the company’s business units and departments.

Protesting workers at Kusile Power Station who gathered at the King George Park after they embarked on protest action.

Eskom Group Executive for Human Resources, Elsie Pule, said:

“We use the recruitment for internal transfers and currently we are effecting them without salary increases. Internal recruitment is the only fair process to transfer employees internally between departments and divisions.”

On Friday, May 18, Eskom reported that earlier in the morning there was violent protest by employees of SGB, a subcontractor of Mitsubishi Hitachi, at the Kusile Power Station. The protest was against SGB management, with the workers demanding that their pay related issues be addressed. In the interest of safety, all contractors were evacuated from the site and the situation was said to be stable.