Union Calls for a “Strong Message” in Reply to South African Tyre Cartel
A spokesman for the South African trade union representing tyre industry workers has called for direct penalties against senior personnel at the tyre manufacturers and organisations accused of participating in cartel activities. In a statement, National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) national spokesperson Castro Ngobese articulated the union’s demand for “individual company directors and their CEOs to be dismissed and face prosecution for colluding and price-fixing.” This measure, he explained, will send a “strong message” that South Africa’s government will not tolerate corruption.
Ngobese referred to the fines recommended by South Africa’s Competition Commission as a “toothless and ineffective” means of penalising the cartel participants. “Any fine on the four companies, however the quantum, does not hit those directly responsible for the price-fixing. The fine will come from the companies’ coffers and could even be recouped by increasing prices, which makes the whole exercise a mockery,” he said.
“The actions of these big four tyre manufacturers are nothing less than theft from the consumers, who have been hardest hit by exorbitant and excessive tyre prices,” Ngobese added. “It is disheartening that they should have to pay even more in order to boost the profits of these tyre manufacturing companies. What is even outrageous is that these big four companies’ workers are still receiving and subjected to racialised and poverty wages. Already workers are on a protected strike action demanding a 15 per cent wage increase and improved conditions of employment for more than two weeks now.”
In April 2010 NUMSA, who represents more than 6,000 tyre industry workers in South Africa, entered into negotiations with the New Tyres Manufacturing Industry Employers Association regarding wage increases and better conditions. These negotiations reached a deadlock in July and collapsed during an extra-ordinary session held on August 2-3. Commenting on the collapsed negotiations on August 13, Ngobese said “we will never allow imperialist owned tyre companies to pay workers apartheid and precarious wages in the midst of huge profits levels that are off-loaded to imperial stock markets in the USA, Europe and Japan.”
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