Maputo — Seasonal cane-cutters on the Maragra sugar plantation about 80 kilometres north of Maputo, have gone on strike, paralysing sugar production.
According to a report in Saturday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias", the strike began on Thursday, and involved considerable violence.
The "Noticias" reporters could see the charred remains of a brand new Isuzu vehicle the strikers had set on fire, computers wrecked, and many windows in the complex broken.
After the outbreak of violence the police were called in, and on Friday members of the riot police were in evidence at the plantation.
The Maragra factory workers are not on strike, but for their own safety they are not in the mill. In any case, there is no sugar cane for them to process: under normal circumstances, the plantation produces 390 tonnes of sugar a day which is immediately refined.
The 500 or so cane cutters are demanding improvements in their wages and working conditions, and say they will only return to work when all their demands have been met.
The strikers told "Noticias" their anger has built up over several years due to an alleged lack of dialogue between the employers and the workforce.
The last straw seems to have been a unilateral change in the method of payment. Under the old system, each worker was given a particular area of sugar cane to cut every day. Once that area was cut, his working day was finished.
But this season, the company decided to pay by the tonne.
The management estimated an area of sugar cane equivalent to six tonnes, and that became the daily task, for which the pay was 36,000 meticais (about 1.5 US dollars) - regardless of whether it took a day or more than a day to complete.
In effect, the company had increased the workload for the cane cutters without increasing their pay.
The workers were initially unaware of the impact of this change. They believed that, regardless of the weight of the cane they cut, they would be paid 36,000 meticais a day. So at the end of the month they were shocked to find that workers who had worked the same number of days had different amounts of take home pay.
The Sugar Workers Union (SINTIA) was not involved in the strike, but immediately opened negotiations with the company, and persuaded it to return to the old method of payment.
SINTIA general secretary, Alexandre Munguambe, told "Noticias" that the company also admitted to not paying overtime.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
He said that Maragra would now do so, the money was available, and the workers could receive it at any time.
The company's general manager, Tony Currie, said that from the start of the sugar campaign in May up until last Wednesday everything had been going normally.
Thursday's disturbances came as an unpleasant surprise.
Currie claimed that the workers had never presented any complaint to the management.
He denied that there was any problem with wages, saying that the cane cutters were paid in accordance with their contracts, and nothing was done outside of the terms of the contracts.
Munguambe said the sharp divergence between the accounts of the dispute given by the management and by the strikers was evidence of the lack of dialogue.
"Noticias" found there was discontent among the factory workers too, who complain of different wages being paid for the same job.
These workers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that anyone who complains is immediately sacked.
The main shareholder in Maragra is the South African company Illovo.
