More than 20,000 members of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa struck the seven major auto assembly plants a week later. Picket lines were militant and determined, and thousands of workers joined marches in Johannesburg and other cities.
A central demand of both unions is for wage agreements that outpace the rate of inflation, which currently hovers at about 6 percent. But further price rises are on the way. The South African rand has lost 20 percent of its value against the dollar since May and banks have raised interest rates to record highs.
The chemical workers' union is demanding a 10 percent wage increase and a R2,000 monthly minimum wage (about $315). The employers began by offering only 6-8 percent. Auto workers called for a wage increase of two percent more than the inflation rate in the last two years of a three-year agreement.
NUMSA and the Automobile Manufacturers Employers Organization settled the strike on August 17. The agreement does not guarantee an inflation-plus-two percent wage package, but it does ensure that workers will achieve wage increases that at least meet inflation if it rises above 7 percent. At lower levels, wage increases will be more than the inflation rate. The auto bosses were under pressure to settle quickly because of export contract obligations.
CWIU strikers succeeded in blockading several oil refineries and depots in the first few days of the walkout, and petrol stations began running out of fuel. The union removed the blockades after court orders on behalf of the employers.
At the Amalgamated Chemicals Association (ACA) plant to the north of the city, shop steward Lynn Bullock said that about 70 workers had struck the pharmaceutical distributor at this location. More than 100 strikers - including workers from other plants - were outside the front gate in a spirited picket.
Striker Cynthia Mangesi, whose first language is Xhosa, said that she started as an assembler in 1990, and pointed to the importance of affirmative action. "There is no development here. You work in the same place until you die. And I'm one of the only Africans working in the plant." Most ACA workers are black, but were classified under the apartheid regime as Colored, a term that persists.
Mangesi says that increasing the minimum wage is critical. "I support my whole family. This month there will be no money, but we must do this or have no future."
Few workers in South Africa would agree with the view expressed by many middle-class commentators that nothing has changed here since the first democratic, nonracial elections in 1994.
Asked about the changes, Mangesi put it succinctly. "Yes, things are so different. We workers can now fight together. Before, we had to take whatever the company meant to give us. Now we don't.... And we can talk now."
Both the CWIU and NUMSA are affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which groups those trade unions that participated in the movement against apartheid rule led by the African National Congress (ANC). Several thousand members of the South African Chemical Workers Union also struck against chemical companies, beginning and ending their walkout before the CWIU strike.
Spokespeople for the bosses violence-baited strikers and said the workers were scaring away investors. A typical editorial in the August 9 Sunday Independent said that "South Africa can no longer afford the disastrous spate of strikes now threatening to wreck the economy.... The international markets, clearly convinced that the government is unable to contain a growing labour militancy, have already spoken and their judgment is reflected in the plummeting value of our currency." The paper scolded that unions must "see beyond their immediate self-interest."
NUMSA spokesperson Tony Kgobe replied that there had been recent strikes by workers in the United States at General Motors and at Hyundai in South Korea. "Even in developed countries workers embark on strike action," he said.
Tony Leon, leader of the Democratic Party, which is fast becoming the chief opposition party to the ANC, called for a curb on union power. Casting himself as a defender of the poor and unemployed, he urged a ban on secondary strikes and picketing, the secret balloting of workers at home before strikes, and making unions liable for the loss of profits resulting from a strike.
The ANC's Shepherd Mdladlana, recently appointed Labor Minister, refused calls to intervene in the strikes. He pointed out that workers' right to strike is written into the bill of rights.