Eskom confirms no protest action at power stations, workers report for duty

Eskom’s spokesperson confirmed in a note to the media on Wednesday morning that employees have returned to work to fulfil the essential service of keeping the country’s lights on.

“I can confirm that many employees are peacefully returning to work and that there are no incidents of protest reported so far today,” Sikonathi Mantshantsha said in a note to journalists.

The update comes after the Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan held a press briefing on Tuesday evening, hours after Eskom took the decision to ramp-up load shedding to Stage 6.

According to Gordhan, the implementation of Stage 6 load shedding was necessitated by the fact that the majority of Eskom employees – about 90% the minister estimated – failed to report to work on Tuesday as a result of intimidatory tactics displayed by disgruntled fellow employees.

Wage negotiations

The employee stay-away observed from Wednesday 22 June came after Eskom management walked out of wage negotiation talks with Solidarity, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Union of Metalworkers South Africa (Numsa) at the central bargaining forum (CBF).

The utility’s decision to return to the negotiating table with unions is the reason why employees are making their way back to work. Although it is still unclear how much Eskom will be offering workers, the parties are set to resume talks on Friday 1 June, where hopefully an agreement will be reached.

“The details of any wage offer will be made known on Friday when the wage negotiations resume,” Mantshantsha says.

Read: Eskom walks out of wage negotiation with union

Fuelling speculation

During the media briefing Gordhan took some time to speculate on the motive behind the alleged intimidation by some Eskom workers over the past week.

“The question the country needs to ask is of those [who] inspire this kind of activity, in whose interest is this? Because electricity is crucial to every household, electricity is crucial to the economy of this country. It’s crucial to ensuring that jobs are retained by businesses, and it is important for investors that we have some certainty about the electricity situation,” Gordhan said.

“[If] these short-term interests are inspired either by wage negotiations or for some other reasons, which I leave you to speculate, it is causing a huge amount of damage to South Africa’s reputation.”

“But also, the ability to ensure that we continue to grow as an economy and continue to provide households with the electricity they require and importantly industry with the electricity it requires,” the minister added.

Talks of sabotage at the power utility are not new, in fact it has been a common topic of discussion for Eskom whenever it holds media briefings or gives routine updates to the country on the state of the state-owned entity.

In May, the power utility opened a case of sabotage with the South African Police Services (SAPS) after a suspected incident of sabotage at the Tutuka power station.

Earlier this year, Moneyweb reported that since 1 April 2021, the utility has recorded 2 752 incidents of theft and vandalism, costing the cash-strapped utility around R200 million.

Read:
Eskom reports sabotage at power station to police
Broke Eskom has to cough up to fight theft, vandalism
Hawks to investigate possible sabotage of SA’s power network