South Africa’s white dominated workers union has announced plans to embark on strike on Monday at petrochemicals firm Sasol. The Solidarity Union has 6,300 members at Sasol’s local operations.
The strike is mainly over a scheme the union says is discriminatory and favours only black South Africans. Sasol is offering a share ownership scheme exclusively to it’s black staff.
South Africa is hoping to reverse the damage caused by the apartheid regime where blacks were excluded from important ownership schemes.
The country’s black economic empowerment rules requires local companies to meet quotas on black ownership, employment and procurement.
Sasol was just responding to that but white South Africans working at the company say the scheme is bad.
The union said in a statement that “We intend to switch off a different section of Sasol each day by means of well-laid and strategic plans.”
The company is however putting in place measures to react to the planned strike.
Reuters quotes an official email from the company as saying that “We have activated contingency measures to minimise potential disruption to our operations”.
Sasol is world leader in converting coal and gas to fuel. It signaled its intention to scale up its black ownership levels in South Africa last year.
Source: Africafeeds.com
