Solidarity takes Sasol fight to court
Sasol workers affiliated to trade union Solidarity marched to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the Sasol headquarters in Sandton on Thursday.
Thousands of workers marched through the streets of Sandton, as part of their action against Sasol’s Khanyisa Black empowerment program.
The predominantly white workers said the program is unconstitutional as it discriminates against them based on the colour of their skin.
The program has two phases, one benefitting all employees with shares in the company amounting to R100 000 per employee.
Solidarity is against the second phase of the program, which will benefit only black employees based on triple BEE policies, and shares amounting to R500 000 per employee.
“We demand the JSE aligns its rules and regulations concerning race with international practice. The JSE’s empowerment segment be revised to ensure that listed empowerment share ownership plans are not race-exclusive, Sasol be notified that Khanyisa the Khanyisa plan be revised and its race exclusivity be changed, and other companies perpetuating the same kind of racial discrimination be notified that they too much change their practices,” said the union’s CEO Dirk Hermann.
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Marchers made their way to the Sasol headquarters and revealed they will be heading to court.
“The workers today said it’s not normal to exclude people on grounds of race, one must not create a society where that is normalized and that is why we marched. We have handed over a memorandum to Sasol and we have asked them to include these workers in their share ownership scheme. We have also decided today to take Sasol to court and we served the first legal papers this morning. We are asking the court to declare the current system of Sasol as illegal, we make use of the Employment Equity Act and it’s based on unfair racial discrimination,” said Hermann.