Neasa in court over wage agreement

Neasa wants the court to prevent the Metal and Engineering Industries Bargaining Council (MEIBC) from asking the labour minister to extend the July 2014 agreement between the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of SA (Seifsa) and trade unions to those who were not party to that agreement.

Neasa wanted the Labour Court to declare the management committee, appointed by MEIBC's annual general meeting invalid and that all decisions taken by the committee relating to the extension also be declared invalid.

Neasa chief executive Gerhard Papenfus said when the agreement was signed Seifsa's chief executive admitted that his organisation had reluctantly agreed and that it would lead to job losses.

Now Seifsa, with the help of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA, MEIBC, and the department were attempting to extend the agreement.

"This is simply ludicrous. We owe it to the metal industry to prevent this from happening," said Papenfus.

This followed a strike in the metals industry which started on July 1 and lasted four weeks.

Seifsa signed the agreement on July 29 on behalf of the 24 federated associations and two associations were still involved in internal mandating processes.

In terms of the three-year agreement workers would get increases of between eight and 10 percent in the first year, 7.5 and 10 percent in the second year, and seven to 10 percent in the third year.

Neasa announced it would lock out union members who participated in the strike because its demands had not been considered during the wage negotiations.

Neasa members wanted a standardised entry-level wage and a revamped exemptions policy. It has offered an eight percent across-the-board salary increase.

Earlier this month, Numsa's Labour Court application to declare Neasa's lock-out of employees illegal, was dismissed with costs.