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Mozambique: Sugar Workers On Strike
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
17 February 2008
Posted to the web 19 February 2008
Maputo
About 600 seasonal workers on the Xinavane sugar plantation in Maputo province have been on strike since Friday, demanding a wage increase of more than 100 per cent.
The workers want the company to raise their wages from 1,100 to 2,500 meticais (from 45.8 to 104.2 US dollars) a month. The statutory minimum wage for agriculture is 1,126 meticais a month.
Among the workers' other demands are written work contracts and protective clothing. The angry strikers attacked the company offices, breaking windows, overturning desks and smashing computers. In the plantation, they set 20 hectares of sugar cane ablaze. Police were called in and in the clashes 14 people were injured, four of them seriously.
The management immediately made a few concessions. The company would supply their workers with protective equipment, it would allow them to take the day off in the event of a death in the family, and it would pay them for any Sundays or other rest days on which they work.
The majority shareholder in Xinavane is the South African sugar giant Tongaat-Hulett, which also owns the Mafambisse mill and plantation in central Mozambique. The Tongaat-Hulett group is not exactly short of money - it made an operating profit of 1.02 billion rands (over 133 million US dollars) in 2006.
Yet it adamantly refuses to pay its seasonal workers more than the legally stipulated minimum wage. In discussions held under the auspices of the Maputo Provincial Labour Directorate, the Xinavane management, according to reports on the private television station STV, has said that wages will only rise in line with this year's negotiations over the minimum wage.
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This is no concession at all, since the company would be in breach of the law if it paid less than the statutory minimum wage.
The tripartite discussions on the minimum wage, between the government, the trade unions, and the employers' associations, have not even started yet. In line with past practice, the new minimum wage, even if it is not announced until May (as happened last year), will be backdated to 1 April. The Xinavane workers are not prepared to wait that long, and have threatened further disturbances if their wage demands are not met.
The strike does not have the backing of the Sugar Workers Union - indeed the strikers have dismissed the union as "sell-outs". The labour directorate agrees with the management that the strike is illegal, because the workers did not submit any document listing their claims, or give the necessary advance notice of strike action.
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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