Members of the United National Transport Union (UNTU) brace yourselves for yet another misleading campaign, by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) to recruit members in its latest attempt to get recognition at Transnet.
Steve Harris, General Secretary of UNTU, says this time NUMSA targeted Transnet Freight Rail and Transnet Engineering in Saldanha in the Western Cape by distributing pamphlets indicating that they have 7 400 members at Transnet and therefore demand organisational rights at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA).
What they don’t state is that Transnet told a Senior Commissioner of the CCMA on 3 October that NUMSA only represents 2% of its employees. NUMSA is required to meet the threshold of 25 % in Transnet to get recognition at Transnet and the Transnet Bargaining Council.
Although the CCMA already repeatedly ruled that NUMSA (and other wannabe Unions) will not be allowed recognition at Transnet or the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) if they don’t meet the required thresholds, it has not stopped NUMSA from wasting the time of the CCMA again and again with the same application.
Harris says all these disputes were born dead the day they were lodged. “The Labour Relations Act is clear. It gives effect to the freedom to bargain collectively by providing the institutional infrastructure for voluntary collective bargaining at sector level and for the binding nature of collective agreements. Transnet and PRASA are parties to collective agreements with UNTU, the majority Union in both state-owned enterprises, and SATAWU.
In an attempt to once and for all resolve this reoccurring dispute over organisational rights, the CCMA intervened on 3 October and got Transnet and NUMSA to agree to do yet another time-consuming verification exercise. The process of this will be debated during the meeting scheduled on 13 October 2017 in the presence of representatives of UNTU and SATAWU.
“This comes after NUMSA was humiliated with its unsuccessful illegal strike by a small group of members in July 2014 at the Ngqura Container Terminal outside Port Elizabeth. The Labour Court declared the strike illegal and permanent Transnet employees who downed tools, had to return to work or face dismissal. NUMSA was ordered to pay all Transnet’s legal costs.
“This has just made NUMSA more desperate as it is now resorting to underhand tactics, spreading lies on posters posted on the walls in mess rooms and ablution facilities to get ill-informed Transnet employees to join them. They have no hope of succeeding,” says Harris.
Issued on behalf of UNTU by Sonja Carstens, Media and Liaison Officer. For UNTU Press Statements phone 082 463 6806 or e-mail sonja@untu.co.za
