Talks today between The Road Freight Employers’ Association (RFEA) and the 4 unions, SATAWU, MTWU, PTWU and TAWUSA have failed, according to Magretia Brown, labour relations manager of the RFEA.

As such the strike as per SATAWU’s notice, which is to commence on 7th April 2009 at 01h00 will continue. “The RFEA has offered 11% to avoid a strike,” said Brown, “which we believe was more than reasonable under the current economic conditions. In addition the employers offered to consider a phase-in approach on the 37% union demand for driver minima. However the unions’ demand in this regard changed over the past 12 hours to also extend to all other grades under the National Bargaining Council. The goal post keeps shifting and the unions have demonstrated utter bad faith in this regard”

The RFEA wishes to reiterate that the Unions’ demands are unrealistic in the extreme and are totally out of line with the current economic realities of this industry where declining freight volumes are the order of the day. Brown said that in light of the above talks broke down and the employers have officially reverted to their previous position of 10.5% on across the board increases.

Brown confirmed that at this stage only SATAWU has given notice of a strike. The other 3 unions who are party to the negotiations, MTWU, PTWU and TAWUSA have confirmed to the RFEA in no uncertain terms that they do not support SATAWU’s position in this regard and that they will advise their members not to participate in the upcoming strike action.