SOUTH AFRICA: Tension rises in textile and clothing industry
Tension in the textile and clothing industry grew last week when two companies charged with flouting industry wage agreements barred a sheriff of the court from entering their premises.
On Thursday a sheriff was prevented from attaching the assets of clothing manufacturers in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, who had been violating the legal minimum wage. The companies reportedly each owe between R600000 and R1,5m in unpaid wages.
According to Leon Deetlefs, the National Compliance Manager at the National Bargaining Council for the Clothing Manufacturing Industry, the sheriff — to whom the council went after exhausting other methods to seek compliance with the law — was threatened with violence.
“The owners of the guilty companies must have been tipped off because they were waiting for the sheriff at the first company he stopped by. He was not allowed on the property and he was told in no uncertain terms the companies would take any measure to stop the writ of execution from being executed,” he said.
"The sheriff was not only met by factory owners but by their employees as well, who directed threats at him.”
The flagrant flouting of the law raises questions about the government’s ability to enforce wage agreements in an industry where SA’s workers are more expensive than in China and elsewhere.
The bargaining council will meet tomorrow.
Johann Baard of the Apparel Manufacturers of SA said their behaviour undermined the competitiveness of the industry. “The argument that seeks to preserve the employment of (people) under intolerably unfair conditions … employers just so that the shutting down of such employers does not lead to any further job losses, is as illogical as it is capricious.
“To sacrifice a complying industry employing tens of thousands of workers under conditions of ‘decent work’, so that employees of noncompliant employers can continue to remain employed in oppressive circumstances, is unconscionable, to say the least.” - I-Net Bridge.
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Source: Business report • News Courtesy: BharatTextile.com
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