The National Union of Metalworkers in South Africa (Numsa) has indignantly called on government to stop subsidising bus company Putco after it this week threatened to dismiss about 1 000 drivers demanding a 6 percent wage increase and payment of outstanding bonuses from 2020.
Throwing its weight behind its 1 400 members at Putco, Numsa said it rejected the intention to dismiss workers after they deliberately frustrated them.
"The union is left with no choice but to call on Transport minister Fikile Mbalula to intervene in the current impasse. The department of transport in our view cannot continue to pay and subsidize a bus company that is anti-worker, union bashing, and selfish to the extreme as clearly its senior management is only prepared to pocket every rand and cent of the cash flow of that company, and share nothing with workers," Numsa's Phakamile Hlubi-Majola said in a statement.
Numsa's General Secretary Irvin Jim on Wednesday visited Putco offices to persuade management to move from their inflexible position and accept in principle that they are going to pay what is due to workers.
"The union is prepared to negotiate a position where workers must be paid their money, and this could be phased in through a process that can be negotiated with workers, but the executive management and the CEO chose to be extremely rude and arrogant. As a result the meeting collapsed as they walked out of the meeting without any solution," Hlubi-Majola said.
According to Numsa, the clouds of the current thunderclap began in 2020 when the South African Road Passenger Bargaining Council (SARPBC) signed a collective agreement for a 6 percent increase and also the payment of the annual bonus.
The union said Putco is a party to the bargaining council and the increase applied to them as well but resisted implementing the increase and applied for a partial exemption, offering a 3 percent increase instead.
The company has since 2020 applied to the Exemptions committee of the SARPBC and they have been rejected twice, with the latest appeal to the Exemptions committee rejected in April of this year.
"We were vindicated when the commissioner confirmed that indeed Putco management can afford to pay the increase. One of the reasons she rejected their application for exemption is because the management of the bus company had the audacity to plead poverty but rewarded its executives with a 7 percent increase. At the same time a whopping R60 million was paid to Carleo Enterprises, which is owned by an Italian family which owns 49 percent of Putco," the union said.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has also weighed in saying that it was deeply concerned by Putco's intention to dismiss 1,000 bus drivers after they embarked on a wildcat strike
The bus drivers said that they were not backing down from their unprotected strike at the bus company’s Pennyville offices.The strike has left more than 22,000 commuters stranded across Johannesburg and Pretoria after management was forced to remove Putco buses from the roads.
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