Catherine Sasman
2 October 2008
Windhoek — Namibia Airports Company (NAC) workers decided to abandon their plans to strike after NAC Chief Executive Officer Vemunjengua Kavari and the Namibia Public Workers Union (Napwu) met them and came to some sort of an agreement.
By yesterday afternoon, stretching into the evening, the NAC board also met to discuss the financial implications the agreement would have on NAC.
The workers threatened to 'close all airports' should their demands for market-related salaries and 20 percent on back pay not be met by noon today.
This resulted in a flurry of meetings and renegotiations on the part of the NAC management, Napwu, the workers and other stake-holders in a bid to stave off the potentially harmful effects recently witnessed in the costly week-long Trans-Namib strike.
A worker preferring anonymity for fear of reprisal told New Era that Kavari and Napwu's Peter Nevonga met them and agreed that the workers would get their market-related salary increases as demanded.
According to this worker, a consensus had to be reached on how the workers' demanded 20 percent interest on the back pay - from June 2003 to August 31 - would be paid out.
He said an initial decision was that the back pay be paid out in two tranches over a three-year period.
On Nevonga's advice, the worker said, it was then decided to have the back pay paid out in a once-off down payment over a two-and-a-half year period.
Workers, however, remain at loggerheads with Napwu's leadership over the manner in which, according to the worker, the union represented - or misrepresented - them.
Nevonga had on Monday afternoon advised the secretary general of the National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW), Evalistus Kaaronda, not to meet the NAC workers at Eros Airport, on the basis that Napwu was representing the workers.
"But after this whole thing the majority of the NAC workers want to go to another union, perhaps Natau [Namibian Transport and Allied Union]," the worker said.
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