Saccawu’s compromise on demands ends Massmart strike woes, after almost three weeks

The South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu) on Monday agreed to end its almost three-week-long wage- and labour-related strike action against retail and wholesale group Massmart.

The union and the retailer have agreed to a 4.5% or R400 wage increase (whichever is highest) across the board for Builders Warehouse employees, effective from July 1, 2021.  This agreement will apply to all 45-hour permanent and 40-hour fixed employees who are part of the union.

Join heated discussions with the Moneyweb community, and get full access to our market indicators and data tools while supporting quality journalism.

R63/month or R630/year

SUBSCRIBE NOW

You can cancel at any time.

Saccawu had initially called for a R500 wage increase for Builders employees while Massmart was at the time offering only R320.

“We never will be pleased, I mean it’s a compromise position so we have to meet each other halfway,” Sithembele Tshwete, Saccawu’s spokesperson told Moneyweb.

“For instance in the Makro commission structure, we didn’t get what we wanted. But with the Game retrenchments we were quite satisfied that our workers are going to be taken back and placed in the group. With the Builders [outcomes], we are comfortable with the R400 increase,” Tshwete said.

Massmart takes on job reinstatement process

Another notable outcome of the settlement relates to the re-employment of Game employees who succumbed to the company’s retrenchment process.

Massmart has resolved to institute a reinstatement programme meant to allocate formerly retrenched Game employees to the currently available vacancies across the group.

The latest available figures show that 385 Game employees were retrenched, however there are only 174 vacancies advertised across the group.

Employees opting into the reemployment process will be not resuming work in their old positions but instead will be allocated to available positions matching their skill set, within a 50km radius from their homes.

Massmart has undertaken to freeze all available vacancies to the public until February 15, 2022, to cater to this process.

Employees who are not successfully placed in the 174 available vacancies will be considered for vacancies that may arise  in the group over the next year.

Saccawu will return to the negotiation table

The union which has about 18 000 members says that although its over-two-week strike has registered some wins, it is not entirely pleased with the settlement outcomes, especially those relating to Massmart’s Makro business.

The union in its initial set of demands called for the review of commission targets set for Makro’s customer relations officers. The union argued that the commission targets for these employees were unreasonably high and placed them at an earnings disadvantage.

However, Massmart seemingly did not budge on this point, leaving employee targets largely unchanged.

Tshwete says that the union has a lifetime to engage with Massmart on these issues and will indeed return to the negotiating table in due time.

“On the issues of the commission structure at Makro, we are still going to engage the company, outside this round of collective bargaining, we feel we have to engage them,” Tshwete said.

“We felt that their (Makro’s) targets are too high for them (employees) not to get commission.”

“The company just didn’t want to listen to us, indicating that it is a business decision. But what we are saying is that it’s a business decision that adversely affects our members because they have to work so hard to chase those targets but still they are not given commission,” Tshwete said,