A strike has been averted in the struggling bus sector after operators and unions reached a 6% wage agreement.
The deal, which will see the industry’s minimum wage rise from R40.43 an hour to R42.85, was reached on Tuesday evening at the SA Road Passenger Bargaining Council (Sarpbac), a platform for employers and workers to discuss wages and conditions of employment.
In a statement on Wednesday, the bargaining council’s general secretary, Gary Wilson, said the agreement is effective from April 1 and will be in force until March 2023.
The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), the SA Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) and the Transport and Allied Workers Union went back to their members for a mandate after employers tabled a revised wage offer of 4.5% — the midpoint of the Reserve Bank’s inflation target — on April 12, having previously said they would give 2.5%. The unions initially sought 11%.
After further engagement among the parties, the employer organisations — including the SA Bus Employers Association and the Commuter Bus Employers Organisation — revised their wage offer from 4.5% to 5.3% and finally settled at 6%.
The unions also made a number of concessions, moderating their demand in the last round of talks to the inflation rate plus 2%.
Numsa, which represents the majority of the estimated 35,000 workers employed in the sector, recently hinted that an agreement was in the offing as the revised 6% wage offer was above inflation. SA’s annual inflation rate reached 5.9% in March and the Reserve Bank expects it to average 5.8% for the year and then to slow to 4.6% in 2023.
Wilson said allowances such as those for night shift, subsistence and travel, cross-border work, double driver trips and tools will all go up by 6% as part of the agreement.
“The increase in allowances was one of the sticking points as unions pointed out that they had remained unchanged in the previous two years due to financial challenges wrought by Covid-19 on bus companies,” he said. “Sarpbac commends the parties for reaching the settlement without industrial action as that would undoubtedly have affected the sector adversely given the economic climate.”
The bus industry was affected by lockdown restrictions that included the closure of borders and limits on bus occupancy numbers. These resulted in the Greyhound and Citiliner bus lines closing shop in February 2021 with the loss of hundreds of jobs. Luxury coach operator Greyhound and Citiliner, the semi-luxury division of Greyhound, resumed operations on April 13 after the company was relaunched.
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