Trying to get to the bottom of on-going work stoppages at the container terminal in Durban harbour in recent weeks – which have seriously upset the container trucking industry because of lots of lost hours – has proved a frustrating task. Getting a wise word out of Transnet Port Terminals (TPT) about what they saw as the problem, and what they were doing about it, was daunting. The dispute between the truckers and the TPT, according to Kevin Martin, vice-chairman of the Durban harbour carriers’ section of the SA Association of Freight Forwarders (Saaff), was about strike action, followed by frequent, short-notice shutdowns of the terminals while port management talked to their staff about the issues at stake. According to local press reports, operations at the Durban container terminal (DCT) – the country’s busiest – were disrupted, with workers demonstrating just outside the terminal gates, and with container trucks backing up along the access road. The first problem for FTW was finding out from TPT what they thought the issues were. Local journalists had told FTW that the DCT workers’ actions seemed to be a matter of a wage dispute, and that negotiations had been going on for several weeks – but with no resolution being reached. The latest of the matters under dispute between union members and the management, according to Jane Barrett, policy and research officer for the SA Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) – the largest worker body in the transport industry – was an issue surrounding the incentive bonus scheme. This bonus, said Barrett, was worked out through a complex formula, with the bonuses applied on a quarterly basis. The problem as the workers saw it was that, just before the last bonus was paid, a port management member had unofficially told workers that it would be about 9%. “But,” she added, “it turned out to be about two-and-a-half percent, and the workers downed tools.” While she agreed that the strike was on a wildcat basis, and unprotected, Satawu supported the workers motives behind the strike. But this was only the beginning of work-stoppages, with follow-up meetings between port management and staff adding their own work delays. According to Martin, every one of these report-back meetings has to be followed by further report-back meetings – “which, in turn, lead to more report-back meetings, followed by another report-back meeting, followed by another, and another – ad infinitum”. Each of these meetings took about a couple of hours. But, Martin complained, this work stoppage leads to a container back-up, and extends the downtime for trucks for a further few hours. “And,” he said, “these report-backs have to be held for each shift – so we get two hours’ delay on the morning shift, two hours for the afternoon shift, and the same for the evening shift. That’s six hours gone out of the day in meetings alone – never mind the rest of the time lost until they catch up on lost time.” The result of over a week of enquiries at TPT eventually led to the communications department happily admitting to the on-going meetings. “What has been done,” FTW was told, “is to engage staff to talk about the issues.” But there was no reply forthcoming to repeated questions about the “whys, whats and wherefores” of the strike – nor about what TPT had done. As we talked to them, TPT communications said, there was no strike. “These (issues) have been resolved,” FTW was told. “So there’s no strike, no go slow at the terminals, at this minute.” But there was no response to what had caused the original strike(s), nor any detail about the TPT solution. “We’d need a list of questions sent to us so that we can quantify each of the complaints,” we were informed. Which again left us stymied for answers just before our print deadline.
