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POWER CRISIS

Exclusive – Eskom increases its offer in wage talks again to 5.25%

Exclusive – Eskom increases its offer in wage talks again to 5.25%
National Union of Mineworkers and National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa members protest in Sandton on 14 June 2018. (Photo: Gallo Images / Netwerk24 / Deaan Vivier)

Eskom has raised its wage hike offer to unions to 5.25% from 4.5%, according to a document seen by Business Maverick.

The trio of unions involved will hold separate meetings later in the day – called caucusing – but a union source said he expected them to reject the offer.

Solidarity is demanding CPI plus 3%, NUM 11% and Numsa 12%.

CPI slowed in April to an 11-month low of 6.8%, data showed on Wednesday. That is unlikely to prevent the central bank from hiking rates again on Thursday to stem the rand’s meltdown.

Read more in Daily Maverick: 

Eskom raises wage hike offer to 4.5% from 3.75%, unions will be seeing red

Stalemate looms after Eskom raises wage hike offer from 3.75% to 4.5%

With inflation at elevated if slowing levels and interest rates rising, the unions will almost certainly push for more than the 5.25% offer which Eskom described as “final”.

The third round of the talks will end Thursday and if they end deadlocked a dispute will likely be called, sending the process into conciliation and arbitration. DM/BM

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  • Johan Buys says:

    Eskom has an AVERAGE package of over R800,000 per person. That is where the problem lies. Imagine how many must be on R2m+ deals for that average, given that general laborers start on R140k.

  • robeclarke25 says:

    Am I missing something here?? It’s been an hour since this story was posted and there has been NO response yet…..
    Is it because we have become so gatvol about Eskom and its perennial failures and choose to ignore it? Is it because the ANC are so sh.. scared of the Unions that they will happily cave in to union demands for fear of losing votes? Is it because they know that Treasury will find the extra billion Rand per month to meet these ridiculous salary demands?? Can these geniuses even comprehend what ONE BILLION is, let alone know how to write it down!!! SA, WAKE UP,we are on the path of no-return and we are facing a seriously bad outcome on ALL fronts…. SAY SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING please!!!!

  • Geoff Krige says:

    Eskom already has an extremely high average salary, and a far higher number of workers per MW of electricity produced than was the case 3 decades ago. Nevertheless, for the unionised workers who are well below the average salary, I could accept an inflation related increase on two conditions:
    1. That it is agreed across the board that the number of employees per MW produced must reduce to what it was 3 decades ago.
    2. That salary-based accountability is introduced to all Eskom employees. My suggestion for this would be that every employee loses 0,2% of their monthly salary per stage of load-shedding per day in the month. So for example if we have stage 4 load-shedding every day of a 30 day month, all employees lose 0,2 x 4 x 30 = 24% of their gross salary to salary-shedding. If we have stage 1 load-shedding for 20 days and stage 6 for 10 days, all employees lose 0,2 x 1 x 20 + 0,2 x 6 x 10 = 4 + 12 = 16% to salary-shedding.

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