Eskom at breaking point

● South Africans can brace for more loadshedding misery this week if Eskom suffers another major breakdown this weekend as a pay strike adds to the utility’s woes.

Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said the strike was preventing repair work being done. He said there had been intimidation of nonstriking workers, which had resulted in loadshedding being ramped up on Friday to stage 4.

“Those who want to work are being intimidated; commodities — including coal — have been prevented from entering the [power stations],” he said.

“We have had to reduce the usage of diesel to hold the reserves back in case of an emergency. If there is a breakdown now we can’t call on people to fix anything. So in case of a breakdown, where we would use a reserve, we had to escalate to stage 4.”

Mantshantsha said it was not possible to say how much diesel had been used already, but consumption had risen.

On Friday, Eskom was granted a court interdict against the unprotected strike action at nine of its power stations and facilities.

Workers are striking over wages. Negotiations at the Eskom central bargaining forum, where the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Solidarity are represented, deadlocked this week.

A Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration process is now under way. Mantshantsha said Eskom was offering increases of between 4% and 5.3% for about 30,000 staff represented in the bargaining forum — an average of 4.7%.

“The unions’ demand opened at 15% increases across the board, but was reduced to 12% by Numsa and between 8% and 10% for NUM and they did not budge. Eskom then walked out.” Solidarity is seeking 5.5%.

Mantshantsha said that according to the state’s bailout conditions, managers would not receive increases or bonuses.

Numsa, in a press release, said the Eskom board and management had no credibility.

“They are complicit in a new form of state capture, where they actively steal from workers to benefit corrupt cronies who are politically connected to the governing ANC ... They walked out because they do not want to be held accountable for their actions.”

Union general secretary Irvin Jim said Numsa leaders would be consulting their members about how to proceed.

NUM’s Helen Diatile feels the meeting with Eskom was just “an exercise to tick a compliance box,” and believes the utility had no desire to negotiate with unions.

“We are left speechless, there is nothing to take to workers as we are still where we were before negotiations started.”

Helgard Cronje, deputy general secretary of the public sector for Solidarity, said: “Solidarity made it clear during the final stages of the last round of negotiations that we do not support protest action within Eskom as we respect the fact that they are an essential service. For this reason we do not understand why they went ahead to get an interdict against our members.”

He said although the protest might be a contributing factor to loadshedding that it is not the sole reason, blaming weather and increase in demand.