Another heavy blow to the economy of the Eastern Cape, as another company in the automotive sector in Nelson Mandela Bay, Dana Spicer Axle, has began its Section 189 retrenchment process. Disgruntled workers of the company embarked on a strike outside the company’s premises in Kariega.

The move comes as several automotive companies across the province continue to downscale operations. Placing more workers at risk in a region already grappling with job losses and economic uncertainty.

Today we met with protesting workers at the Dana Spicer Axle plant in Kariega (formerly Uitenhage), who are engaged in a strike against retrenchments.

The plant is based in Gqeberha and supplies parts to the automotive industry particularly Isuzu, Ford and Toyata

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Workers say unfair retrenchment processes and unreasonable conditions have led to the demonstration. They say the company has opted to retrench workers with only a few years of service, instead of offering voluntary severance packages to long-serving employees.

Some of the workers had this to say. “People who were retrenched last week only got R5000, what are we going with this little money? There were people called back by Dana, they were given R48 per hour which is way below the benchmark. ”

Another frustrated worker adds that they have been three to four days a week and they would sometimes get no pay. “We have children to feed, we cannot even pay our debts.”

Meanwhile, CEO of the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber, Denise Van Huyssteen, says over 6 000 job losses have been recorded in the metro’s manufacturing sector over the past 18 months.

“One of the core reasons for the shrinking of the components of the manufacturing is the displacement of locally assembled vehicles in the market by cheaper imports from Asian markets. This has now increased to the extent that last year 67% of  the vehicles sold in South Africa represented imports. Coupled with this, local manufacturers have been struggling with enabling environment issues such as high energy costs, unreliability of power supply, logistics inefficiencies and the lack of delivery of basic services.”

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