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A. LE FLOCH
A meeting on 16 June with the board of conciliators failed to resolve any of the outstanding issues under negotiation between the National Union of Plantation and Agricultural Workers (NUPAW) and Zambia Sugar, said Mailoni Kabuyali, NUPAW general secretary, in an interview with The Sugar Worker.
A new meeting with the company had been scheduled for the following
week, when the parties would review the state of negotiations, and a decision might be taken to go to arbitration or the union might be in a position to call a strike. This follows a period of unsuccessful meetings between the parties which ended with the call for conciliation in the first week of May. Some 4,400 workers are covered by the current negotiations.
On wages, the parties were still far apart, with management offering a 10 percent increase, against a union demand of 40 percent. Union sources said that only recently the government agreed to a 16 percent increase for public employees, while Zambia Sugar, which has recorded profits, is unwilling to even match such increase.
On terms and conditions of service under negotiations, management has argued that the company is not able to pay for increasing costs, and therefore cannot agree to any of the union demands. For instance, the unions believes that the funeral grants of 250,000 Zambian kwachas given for deceased employees and 84,000 kwachas for an employee’s parents are not adequateb and need to be reviewed.
Despite a slight fall in production for the year ending on 31 March 2007, Zambia Sugar recorded an increase in profits after tax of 101.162 billion Zambian kwachas, up from 78.840 billion in 2006. Earnings per share also increased from 14.43 kwachas to 18.53. (Current exchange rate: USD 1.00 = ZMK 4,323.90) Zambia Sugar is a subsidiary of Illovo Sugar, which reported a strong financial performance for the year ending on 31 March 2007. (See relatedarticle elsewhere in this issue.)