Five Newcastle textile companies have been dealt a blow by Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant.
|||Durban - Five Newcastle textile companies, which last month successfully challenged a government decision regarding a wage agreement, may have been dealt a blow after Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant ordered that all industry employers have to comply with the agreement by Tuesday next week.
The minister’s notice, published in the Government Gazette on Friday, means that all clothing and textile employers will have to comply with a 2012/13 clothing industry bargaining council wage agreement for the next three years.
Oliphant’s decision to extend the agreement to non-members of the council had prompted the Newcastle businesses and the United Clothing and Textile Association (Ucta) to approach the Pietermaritzburg High Court last month for relief, which it got.
Judge Piet Koen found that Oliphant had been incorrect in relying on a certificate of representivity issued to the council, rather than basing her decision on the representivity of the parties to the collective agreement at the time that the agreement was submitted to the labour department.
Oliphant’s latest notice, however, appears to have reversed some of companies’ court victory.
Adding to Ucta’s woes, the Southern African Clothing & Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu), which with Oliphant and the clothing council, was listed as respondent in the high court matter, has filed an application for leave to appeal against the judgment.
On Friday, the minister’s notice was gazetted after an agreement that was signed in October 2012, after negotiations between Sactwu and seven clothing employers’ organisations represented on the National Bargaining Council For the Clothing Manufacturing Industry.
According to the notice, the agreement is legally binding on all employers and employees in the clothing manufacturing industry effective from Tuesday, April 23 until August 31, 2016.
Sactwu said yesterday that the bargaining council was empowered to prosecute employers who did not comply with the agreement’s provisions.
The provisions include increasing the minimum wage by 6.5 percent in metro areas and by 10 percent (rounded) in non-metro areas such as Newcastle; and prohibiting employers from retrenching older workers and replacing them with new workers on the “incentivised” wage rate.
Sactwu’s general secretary, Andre Kriel, said this was a significant development and a great victory for them.
“It further strengthens our previous claim that those employers who secured a recent judgment have won a temporary and hollow victory,” he said.
The union applauded non-party members who had already complied with the new minimum wage agreement. It said they now required all employers, “such as those in non-metro areas like Newcastle, Isithebe, Botshabelo, Mogwase and Ladysmith as well as those employers who ran to court instead of joining the wage negotiations process”, to immediately comply.
“We caution that their failure to do so will leave us with no option other than to: ensure that the bargaining council intensifies its compliance enforcement processes; and invoke our now gazetted and extended unfettered right to strike against such non-compliance,” Kriel said.
Ucta chief executive, Leon Deetlefs, said yesterday that they had given the council until the end of the week to respond to their written notification that they did not accept the 2012/13 wage agreement.
“We are still of the opinion that the minister has not followed the correct procedures and has simply followed the same route which resulted in the Pietermaritzburg High Court judgment,” he said.
Deetlefs said that should they not receive a formal response, they would decide on a course of action.
Ucta’s three main points are:
* That it does not accept the current agreement..
* That it wants the council to stop harassing its members, particularly in the Newcastle area.
* It wants a refund of fees paid to the council.
Deetlefs said that it amounted to millions of rand, but that they were still calculating an exact figure.
He said a legal claim would be lodged should the council not return the money.
The five Newcastle companies that had challenged the minister’s 2010 wage agreement are owned by Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese businessmen.
Alex Liu, an Ucta member and chairman of the Newcastle Chinese Chamber of Business, said their future was “in the air” as their legal team was still trying to defend writs of execution against them and also trying to prevent them from being shut down.
“No one is willing to invest in equipment because of the bargaining council uncertainty,” he said, referring to clothing and textile employers reluctant to buy new equipment or expand their business.
Liu said they were also waiting for the high court’s decision on Sactwu’s application for leave to appeal, adding that they would defend any appeal.
Commenting on Sactwu’s application, Kriel said yesterday that the union did not feel the court came to a proper decision
.
He said the decision had set a bad legal precedence, “which is consequently bad for workers”.
The application for leave to appeal was made earlier this month and a date is yet to be set for it to be heard.
noelene.barbeau@inl.co.za
Daily News