Wage negotiations between Eskom and South Africa’s two major unions collapsed on Thursday after the unions rejected the power utility’s offer.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), National Union of Mineworkers and Solidarity rejected Eskom’s 5,25% after they sneezed at the utility’s
offer of 4.5% during their previous wage talks on Tuesday.
In the meeting, Numsa, which is led by Irvin Jim, stated that Eskom could not plead poverty when it was wasting over R3-billion per annum on private security contracts.
Numsa spokesperson Phakamile Hlubi-Majola said Eskom should take its workers seriously and consider their well-being as times are tough.
“Food inflation is extremely high, and the cost of fuel and basic goods has sky-rocketed, and to make matters worse, the South African Reserve Bank has hiked interest rates, which means our members are going to struggle even more to make ends meet.
“Workers at Eskom have for the past three years been subjected to austerity measures. The allowances have not changed since 2016/17 and this is because Eskom has been taking away from workers in order to fund bloated costly primary energy contracts, which have ballooned from R83-billion in the 2017 financial year to R155-billion in the 2023 financial year,” said Hlubi-Majola.
She also said the confirmation that former Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter stated in his affidavit that the power utility was spending approximately R3.2-billion per annum on private security has proven that the looting of state funds was on a grand scale.
“They loot through the procurement expenditure, and they will not intervene to reduce those expenses, but when workers at Eskom ask for a decent wage increase, the SOE (state-owned enterprise) pleads poverty.
“Workers at Eskom refuse to continue to suffer, whilst the financial mismanagement of the entity continues unabated. Eskom management says that National Treasury has promised to fund them, but the funding comes with conditions and that these monies cannot be used to improve wages and benefits of workers at Eskom,” said Hlubi-Majola.
In February during his budget speech, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said the National Treasury had proposed to provide the embattled power utility with R254-billion in debt relief over the next three years.
Numsa said it was workers at Eskom who were working tirelessly to keep the grid from collapsing and keep the lights on, therefore, the Treasury had to allocate money to meet the wage demands.
“National Treasury has been grossly irresponsible by failing to stop the rapid escalation of the cost of primary energy. What National Treasury should do is to make sure that it allocates enough money so workers can at least have decent wage increase. Numsa will be engaging its members at Eskom in order to seek a new mandate.
“We will meet again soon for another round of wage talks within the Centralised Bargaining Forum, which is scheduled for 13 and 14 June.
“We remain committed to resolving this round of wage talks as soon as possible. We are aware that the stakes are high because of loadshedding, and we are eager to see loadshedding come to an end. We remain hopeful that we will be able to find an amicable resolution to the wage negotiations,” she said.
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