The biggest labour union at South Africa\u2019s state-owned port and rail company are starting final talks with a third-party arbitrator to resolve a wage dispute and stave off a potential strike by thousands of workers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Should the talks at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration on Wednesday and Thursday fail, the United National Transport Union will move to strike. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a statement, the UNTU, representing more than half of Transnet’s more than 46,000 employees, said it would issue a 48-hour strike notice if negotiations fall through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
UNTU said union members this week approved \u201ctaking to the streets\u201d to demand that their wage demands be met. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
UNTU rejected the company’s offer to increase pay by 6% over the next two years and 5.5% in the third year, instead demanding 10% in the first year alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The smaller South African Transport and Allied Workers\u2019 Union accepted the pay offer in March. The nation\u2019s annual inflation slowed to 2.7% in March. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The wage dispute comes as Transnet works to recover from years of corruption and theft and deals with dilapidated equipment that has posed a key threat to the South African economy and its exports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the Treasury, inefficient rail lines and ports have sent coal and iron ore exports to multi-decade lows and cost the nation more than R400 billion ($21.8 billion) in 2022. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A World Bank study ranks key ports run by Transnet, which has R138 billion in debt and is among the least efficient worldwide. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The biggest labour union at Transnet are starting final talks to stave off a potential strike by thousands of South African workers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":822481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1850,853,2138],"class_list":["post-824055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-bloomberg","tag-south-africa","tag-transnet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824055"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":824060,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824055\/revisions\/824060"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}