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THE NATIONAL Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) will meet with Eskom management as part of the entity's Centralised Bargaining Forum (CBF) for the third round of salary talks, which take place this week from Tuesday to Thursday.
Phakamile Hlubi-Majola, Numsa’s national spokesperson, said that in the last round of wage talks, Eskom’s executive council presented financials for 2023/24 and the finances demonstrated that Eskom could definitely afford to pay workers’ demands because they were not doing anything to intervene in the biggest cost drivers, which were the primary energy costs, which had ballooned from R83 billion in the 2017 financial year to R155bn in the 2023 financial year.
"Eskom budgeted a further increase of almost R30bn for this financial year, which will see primary energy costs rocket to R184bn by the end of this financial year.
"Primary energy costs account for 70% of Eskom’s operational expenditure, and they are increasing year on year by more than 15%, while the bargaining unit salary cost, which accounts for an average of 8% of Eskom’s operational costs, has remained almost the same, which is why we say they can comfortably meet our demands.
"The Eskom board and executive will need to revise their budget to take money from workers to fund diesel in the first six months of the financial year.
"André de Ruyter's false allegation that wage increases demanded by workers at Eskom would cost R1.6bn a year is a lie. The 7% increase granted was only R553m, covering all 27,300 bargaining unit employees, resulting in a 3% increase in overall salary cost compared with the 112% increase in diesel expenditure."
Hlubi-Majola added that Eskom’s projections showed that the 18.65% tariff increase for 2023/24 would translate into an additional R50bn in revenue, and the government debt relief of R78bn for the 2023/24 financial year as well as R66bn for the 2024/25 financial year would help Eskom to pay interest and debt repayments, which would effectively alleviate Eskom’s financial constraints.
"We reject the narrative from Eskom management that they cannot afford to improve on the wage proposal; it is clear they can afford to. Also, workers at Eskom have not had a meaningful increase in three years because they keep taking from the workforce in order to fund the bloated primary energy costs.
"We also demand that the issue of the income differentials, which Eskom agreed to address in 2017, be implemented. In some cases, the gap is as wide as R9,000 per month, and Eskom committed to fixing that problem.
"Numsa continues to reject the current Eskom offer as it is still far from what we requested on salary increases. We have made submissions about how much gasoline price increases are affecting workers and how they are struggling to survive. Secondly, the rising electricity costs, food prices, the ever-increasing interest rate, and the general cost of living increase have a direct and substantial impact on workers’ salaries.
"We demand an above-inflation increase for the simple reason that basic foodstuffs and daily expenses have gone up way beyond inflation in some cases. All these costs are making life expensive for ordinary workers and their families.
"We are calling on the Eskom executive management to once again reshuffle the current Eskom negotiators, who have consistently demonstrated a lack of urgency in concluding these wage talks," said Hlubi-Majola.