Steel Industry: STANDSTILL AGREEMENT: AN “ACCOMPLISHMENT” REMOVED FROM REALITY

STEEL INDUSTRY

STANDSTILL AGREEMENT

AN “ACCOMPLISHMENT” REMOVED FROM REALITY

Dear employer

SEIFSA recently announced, somewhat sanctimoniously, that they have managed to conclude a ‘standstill agreement’ with trade unions in the Metal and Engineering Sector.

According to the announcement, this agreement retains all the terms and conditions of the SEIFSA agreement, which expired on 30 June 2020, with an additional wage-freeze agreement until 30 June 2021.

SEIFSA boasts that the employer parties to this agreement represents 56% of the scheduled employees employed by employer organisations on the Bargaining Council.

However, here is what SEIFSA has not revealed:

• SEIFSA organisations represent less than 10% of the employers in the sector, a fact which they are never keen to acknowledge. Employers’ organisations do not negotiate on behalf of employees, but on behalf of employers;

• the wage agreement which SEIFSA has so proudly retained is the same destructive, unaffordable and anti-competitive agreement which has bound their members for the past 3 years (and a decade before that). A wage freeze at this point will do very little to assist SEIFSA employers, which are now, once again, bound to this agreement; and

• NEASA members have not been bound to this agreement or any of these agreements for a number of years and have been able to determine fair and affordable conditions of employment in the workplace, and will continue to do so.

SEIFSA seemingly believes that they have achieved a great victory. However, all that they have in fact achieved is to push their members even further into the abyss by ensnaring them in the same conditions of employment as before. The wage-freeze concession by the unions may seem beneficial on the short term but they can rest assured, come next year, the unions will claim their pound of flesh.

Regards

We are all in this together.
Privileged and challenged to be South African.