Wednesday, 29 July 2009

Intimidation

Some of our members were intimidated today because they did not participate in the strike.

We will not tolerate this behavior of individuals at all. BEMAWU has followed a democratic process to ballot our members in respect of the acceptance of the SABC's offer. The overwhelming majority of our members voted in favor of accepting the SABC's offer on the conditions stipulated by us. We respect that majority vote. We at the same expect other employees to respect that democratic process and the outcome of same as we respect their right to strike. We are jointly in this dispute as organized labor and we remain committed to the cause of workers and unity of Organised labor.

However, the acts of intimidation is now threatening the unity of organized labor.

BEMAWU is not in bed with management, as certain individual would like to propagate in their cheap recruitment campaigns. We have pulled off a full blown strike at Lotus FM last week and we will continue with that strike if our demands are not met. We are on strike there because members have voted in favor of a strike. If we were in bed with management, why are we on strike then at Lotus?

So why are we prepared to sign the agreement? We are giving effect to the ballot we have conducted. In other word, we received a mandate to settle the dispute. Similar to what MWASA did last year when they signed the multi-term agreement with the SABC without us or CWU agreeing and signing the agreement. They did that because one would presume they had mandate from their members to sign. We presume that is why they consulted us to inform us they have signed. The CWU followed suit and signed the agreement without talking to BEMAWU. Presumably at that point in time it was more important to adhere to member's mandate to sign and accept than to stick with organized labor.

Putting differently, they followed mandate as we doing now.

The majority of our members believe the offer of 8,5% with a further 1,5% in acceptable in the current circumstances, and they have mandated us to accept the offer. The remaining 2,2% will not disappear. We believe we have secured it for further negotiations.

We have reported the intimidation to the SABC and the Police. Anyone intimidating any of our members will be criminally prosecuted. The SABC ensured us they will guarantee the safety of our members.

We request that all intimidation incidents be reported to us to ensure prosecution.

We are the SABC, and we are supposed to be professional and step with human rights and democracy.

Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom!

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