Air Namibia strike goes ahead

A planned strike at the national airline is set to go ahead as planned today, but a countrywide strike by service station workers has been called off after intervention by State House. According to the Secretary-General of the Namibian Fuel and Allied Workers Union (Nafawu), the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare has been instructed to intervene in the strike. The Association of Service Station Owners (ASSO) has been summoned to a meeting today to discuss the workers’ grievances, he said. “The strike has therefore been called off. We cannot strike. We need to negotiate.” More than 4 000 petrol attendants had been threatening to cripple service stations countrywide today. The workers were demanding the implementation of the minimum wage of N$4 600, and eight-hour shifts. The union and its members decided to call a national strike after service station owners allegedly refused to negotiate on salary adjustments and minimum wages. Meanwhile, Air Namibia’s cabin crew members are not giving in. On Wednesday a marathon meeting took place between the Namibian Cabin Crew Union (NCCU), the management of the company and the Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, Alpheus Muheua. The union president, Reginald Kock, yesterday said that members had rejected the company’s offer and the strike would go ahead. According to him the management proposed that the strike should be postponed until June 20 and the members were not willing to do that. The bone of contention is the company’s pay grading system, introduced in 2010. One of the concerns raised with the company was the fact that only two-thirds of employees moved onto the new system, excluding the pilots. Another concern was that they did not agree with the grading of employees and how the benchmarking was done. Kock said they had tried to resolve these concerns, both internally and externally, and therefore the crew members voted for industrial action. Cabin crew on inbound overseas flights will return to Windhoek but no flights will leave Namibia fully staffed.