IUF logo; clicking here returns you to the home page.
IUF
Uniting Food, Farm and Hotel Workers World-Wide


Krafts job destruction strategy hits South Africa

Posted to the IUF website 07-Aug-2006

Share this article.

photo



Kraft has renewed the vicious cost cutting and job destruction exercise started in 2004, a strategy that continues today to threaten the livelihoods of 8000 workers world wide.

The latest group of workers to fight back against this destructive job-busting strategy of the world's second largest food producer are those at the company's Elandsfontein site in South Africa. The Elandsfontein plant is the only Kraft production unit in South Africa and its products include the Royal range of baking powder, instant pudding and the Manhattan range of sweets.

Earlier this year the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) submitted a claim on behalf of the 314 workers which included an 8% wage increase; an increase in severance pay from two to four weeks for every year of service; a two year moratorium on redundancy; an increase in night shift allowance from 20% to 25%; initial negotiations failed to move the company and the FAWU called a strike on 25th of May.

Krafts' response was to lock the workforce out and import 180 scab workers.
FAWU have repeatedly tried to resolve this dispute only to come up against an implacable management determined to break union organisation on the site. The FAWU members and their families are fighting to defend jobs in a country currently experiencing 43% unemployment rate.

It is apparent that Kraft has to some extent manufactured and continued to promote this conflict to weaken the Union.

The company is now claiming that it can run the plant without the striking workers by fully exploiting the 180 scab employees which has resulted in a worsening health and safety environment as well as decreased productivity.

The lock out and the use of scab labour was designed to provoke FAWU but despite that FAWU called on the good offices of the Conciliation , Mediation and Arbitration (CMMA).As a result the union accepted a 6.5% increase.

But this dispute is not essentially about pay, it's about jobs and Kraft refuses to move on the FAWU demand for a moratorium on redundancy and an increase in severance to the industry norm of four weeks, regardless of age.

Kraft is unashamedly trying to exploit the economic insecurity of these workers in what is an emerging economy suffering high levels of unemployment.

The Elandsfontein dispute is a battle between a Transnational Corporation determined to reduce jobs to an absolute minimum with worsening conditions in order to increase already high levels of profit and a union determined to defend and improve these jobs for the benefit of their members and their community.

FAWU workers are now in the tenth week of their struggle and need your solidarity and support.