Johannesburg - Cement and building materials producer Lafarge South Africa has dismissed about 150 of the company’s employees after they embarked on an illegal strike and ignored two written ultimatums to return to work.
Veli Gwamanda, the country director for human resources at Lafarge SA, said yesterday that the dismissals followed several illegal work stoppages in the past few weeks.
Gwamanda said contingency plans were in place and operations had not been affected, but Lafarge SA continued to monitor the situation.
She said employees from some of the company’s sites, including the main cement plant in Lichtenburg, were issued with letters of dismissal on July 8 after they had ignored two written ultimatums to return to work.
Gwamanda said the workers had illegally downed tools and demanded the reinstatement of the National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) national full-time shop steward, who had been suspended for contravening company policy.
She said Lafarge SA’s management regretted having to issue the notices of dismissal, but it was left with no other choice.
“We had exhausted all avenues, including giving the employees ample opportunity to return to work, as well as engaging the NUM head office.
“The workers repeatedly engaged in illegal works stoppages despite continued efforts to reach amicable solutions on outstanding issues,” she said.
Gwamanda added that Lafarge SA’s management continued to be prepared to discuss any concerns with employees, but could unfortunately not condone illegal behaviour nor actions that undermined the company’s policies and procedures.
“We also had to act to protect our non-striking workers who were being threatened, harassed, intimidated and in some cases physically assaulted,” she said.
Cosatu claimed Lafarge SA attempted to forcefully relocate the full-time shop stewards from Lichtenburg to its head office so the company could “exploit members of NUM” and questioned why the relocation happened after the full-time shop stewards requested the company to implement an agreement on a housing subsidy and closing the wage gap.
Job Sliso, the Cosatu North West provincial secretary, said when approached for comment yesterday that this was the first time he had heard of the dismissals.
Sliso said Cosatu had also differed with Lafarge SA in that the workers were on an illegal strike because the union had been engaging with the company about the implementation of a resolution on a housing subsidy and closing the wage gap.
Demands
He said disciplinary hearings for striking workers took place last week but they had not yet been informed of the outcome.
Cosatu’s demands include that Lafarge SA must allow all workers to return unconditionally to work within seven days; meet with Cosatu and NUM to resolve all issues that workers had raised, including the housing subsidy and closing wage gap; and cancel the suspension of the full-time shop steward.
Sliso said Cosatu would be marching on the premises of Lafarge SA today in support of NUM and its members and to pressurise the company on all the issues raised by the union.
He said Cosatu supported all the demands of Tribal Authority of Bodibe and would be part of their march on Wednesday where they would stop the company from operating in the area if it did not accede to both workers and the community’s demands.
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