Labour
Low Wages Put 8 000 Clothing Jobs at Risk
By SLINDILE KHANYILE, Business Report 26/8/10
Aug 26, 2010 - 8:57:48 AM

About 8 000 jobs are on the line in the clothing and textile industry in KwaZulu-Natal after employers shut their doors in protest against pressure to pay a minimum wage of R324 a week.

The employers are objecting to raids carried out by the clothing manufacturing national bargaining council, which is trying to recoup wages owed to workers.

At last week's meeting, the owners were informed there would be raids on at least 47 factories paying employees below the minimum wage, with priority given to those paying below R200 a week.

In total, 30 factories are not operational. Two were closed by a sheriff on Tuesday, while the rest were shut down by the owners themselves in solidarity with their colleagues.

The Chinese-owned clothing factories, based in Newcastle, have been in discussions with the bargaining council over the wages for more than a year, with the latest meeting held last week.

The factories will remain closed until tomorrow, but if no solution is found, another 55 factories are expected to join the protest next week.

Leon Deetlefs, the national compliance manager for the clothing manufacturing national bargaining council, said yesterday that of the 47 factories, nine were paying workers less than R200 a week.

"The meeting last week was called because a sheriff was threatened and attacked during the raids and we wanted to discuss how to deal with the unruly behaviour," said Deetlefs.

"They then requested that we place a moratorium on the raids, but this was declined by the council and they were informed in writing. We started with the worst offenders, those who are paying below R200 per week," he added.

Alex Liu, the chairman of the Newcastle Chinese Chamber of Commerce, said the firms' doors would be shut indefinitely from next week if no agreement was reached between the two parties.

Liu argued the bargaining chamber of the council had outdated records that showed firms were paying R90 a week.

"The lowest paid worker in our factories earns R250 a week and the highest R500. But they are also demanding that we pay the minimum wage of R324 a week and it is impossible for us to do that because we are competing with imports from China and the (cut, make and trim) price from our customers will not sustain us if we paid R324 a week," said Liu.

Deetlefs said the council was not looking at the current wages, but those for the period between September 2008 to September last year.

He added that each factory owed between R657 000 and R2.8 million, including arrears.

Liu said firms would lose about R3m in revenue over the three days, while workers would lose about R1m in wages.

The Newcastle Chinese Chamber of Commerce was expected to discuss the way forward at last night's meeting.

"Retrenching is one of the options that we will look at in our meeting. This is a difficult route for us and we did not want to take it. It is risky for us as well because we could lose customers, but we have no choice because we don't like the way that the bargaining council is treating us," said Liu.

Ferdie Alberts, the director of economic development at the Newcastle municipality, said Newcastle had a 60 percent unemployment rate and could not afford to lose more jobs.

Michael Maeso, a partner at law firm Shepstone & Wylie, added that if the argument was that the bargaining council was causing the shut downs, there were several options available, such as applying for exemptions from paying the minimum wage or staggering the payments over a period of time to bring the wages up to the minimum wage.