Unions say merger conditions set by the Competition Tribunal have not been met.
About 50 workers at Heineken Beverages, which recently merged with one of South Africa’s largest alcohol producers, Distell, have lodged a dispute with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) to get the company to employ them on a permanent basis.
The workers, mostly forklift operators, are employed by labour broker Vericon Outsourcing. They say they are effectively permanent workers and should be recognised as such in terms of the Labour Relations Act.
The workers are represented by the Simunye Workers’ Forum (SWF) and supported by the Casual Workers Advice Office (CWAO). The matter is now going to arbitration at the CCMA. A date is yet to be set.
The CCMA case follows the Competition Tribunal’s decision to approve the merger of Heineken with Distell in March 2023. In approving the merger, the Competition Tribunal set several conditions, including a limit on retrenchments, fair wages for all employees including temporary and outsourced workers. The Tribunal also said the new company must investigate complaints raised by outsourced workers during the Tribunal hearing, and must make an assessment of recruitment, management and termination practices applied to all permanent and sourced workers.
One of the workers said that when they had previously asked to be made permanent staff, in September 2022, Vericon had threatened them with losing their jobs. As a result, he said, they had again signed short term contracts “under duress”.
But, he said, the nature of their work is not casual or temporary and they should be permanent workers and have access to benefits such as a provident fund. The worker, who did not want to be identified for fear of victimisation, has worked at Distell, now Heineken, since 2020 as a forklift operator.
A Heineken spokesperson said the primary respondent in the CCMA matter is Vericon, and Heineken has not yet received a notice of arbitration, but is interested in an "amicable resolution to the matter."
As a result of the merger with Distell, Heineken now owns a number of popular South African beverage brands such as J.C Le Roux, Klipdrift, Savannah, Hunters and Nederburg, as well as Namibia Breweries.
Heineken said it would make an "ambitious package" of public interest commitments including ongoing business investment, broad-based black economic empowerment, job creation, localisation and supplier development.
Source: Ground Up
