Some employees of Reliance Foundries took to a peaceful strike on Thursday demanding salary increment, bonuses and new overalls, among other things. It all started on Wednesday when employers failed to give workers their annual bonuses. Then employees decided to sit under trees waiting for the managers to sort themselves out before they could resume duty.
Reliance Foundries Human Resources and Production Managers, Messrs David Meswele and Kobus Mula confirmed that they indeed promised their employees salary adjustment effective October 3, but they have failed due to unforeseen circumstances. They have also confirmed that they were to pay their workers bonuses which they failed to do because the banks were closed. Because the banks were closed we did not have enough change to cater for everyone. We even told them in advance that the money we had was not enough for all of them, said Mr Meswele.
However, employees rubbished Mr Mesweles claims saying the management had known well in advance that they would be paying them bonuses and hence could have prepared. The manager told us that in case he fails to pay our bonuses on time we should take him to task. But now we decided not to harm anybody, but just to sit under trees and wait for our pay, said one employee with the backing of others. We were supposed to have got our increment yesterday, but there has never been any communication. We hung here yesterday until 7 oclock and no one appeared until we retired home, claimed their representative.
But managers said they were baffled by the step taken by employees to address their grievances, saying if anything labour laws will apply because what employees were doing was illegal. In fact we want to call them and understand why they are on strike because we are just waiting for banks to open and we sort them out, said Mr Meswele. The managers further told BOPA that they were in no mood to fight with employees as there would be no winner in the end.
But after talking to their employers for close to ten minutes workers went back to shades demanding to be paid so that they could resume their work prompto. BOPA
