SATAWU STRIKE TO TAKE PLACE ON THE 17 MAY

DORIANNE ARENDSE
Trade union Satawu has confirmed to VOC News that the planned strike against Metrorail will not go ahead on Monday as planned. Speaking to VOC News on Saturday morning the spokesman for the union in the Western Cape Ivan Abrahamse said they will only be issuing their members with a notice to strike this week and therefore will not be able to proceed with the strike action as planned. He said the strike will now take place on 17 May 2010.

Workers are demanding a 15% wage increase while the employer is only offering 8 percent. Talks deadlocked this week and Satawu announced their decision to strike. "We have a mandate to issue a notice to strike next which, this means that we will only embark on strike action on the 17 May 2010," said Abrahamse.

He said he was not sure if Metrorail would be running its normal schedule on Monday of if they will still have a shutdown of its services as planned. "I am not sure if Metrorail will be running its normal service next week. They have indicated that they will be suspending their services. As far as we are concerned our strike is only starting on the 17," explained Abrahamse.

Confirmed

Meanwhile Metrorail's Riana Scott confirmed to VOC News that their service will be running as normal next week. She said they will only suspend their services once Satawu embarks on strike action. "The complete shut down of our services is dependent on the strike action going ahead. If it is not going ahead and we have had assurances to that effect, that means that our service will operate normally. We will be selling singles, returns and weekly tickets. We encourage our customers to make use of that. Obviously whenever the strike is called we will go back into contingency mode," explained Scott.

She said the contingency plan which they put in place is the shutdown of its operations. "We will be forced to close down our operations entirely as both the unions will participate. All of our contingency plans with extended peak for bus services, additional bus services, as was announced by the City of Cape Town will kick into action," she said.

When asked if they were selling their monthly tickets at a reduced cost, Scott replied that it was not ‘as easy as they thought to reduce the cost of the tickets because of the ticketing system which they used'. "I know there was intentions to do that, however our ticketing system and financial system does not allow us to change that as easy as what was initially thought. At the moment we have no indication from our principles at to what the arrangement will be. It is not a judgment call that a region can make on its own. We will wait on guidelines from our principles and implement whatever they decide," explained.

Wage offer

According to Scott the company has had no word yet from trade union Utatu on whether they will be accepting the improved wage offer from Prasa. "We have not been formally notified of either union's intentions, so we hope that this week will bring clarity," she said.

Scott said that they will still not be selling monthly tickets for the month of May as they feel it would not be fair to sell a monthly ticket when they cannot guarantee a service for the entire month. "If we look at the way events are unfolding, it would be very unfair to sell a monthly ticket and that was our contention right from the start. Because we have no indication of how long the strike would be, it would be unfair to sell a monthly ticket and leave people without ready cash to make alternative arrangements should they need to.

"So for now and for May we will be continuing to sell weekly tickets for that very reason. Until we have clarity on the strike and no the duration or whether it is going ahead or not, we will continue every week to sell weekly tickets, singles and returns," said Scott.