The South African transport worker’s strike is likely to end today, but the fall-out will continue.
The container export terminals in South Africa’s ports are expected to run at full capacity again from this weekend after a devastating two-week strike that caused serious disruption to the country’s export programmes.
While the differences between the striking unions and the Transport authority have been settled, members of the unions will only be asked to ratify the settlement today and the fall-out of the strike will continue for some time. During the strike conventional reefer terminals continue to work and a number of additional reefer vessels were chartered to move volumes which would otherwise have been shipped in containers.
During the strike the Fruit Industry generally remained silent, but the decision by Maersk shipping company to impose a congestion surcharge on exporters because of the strike sent tempers flaring, with the government and the transport authority, Transnet, being accused of putting the country’s export programmes at risk.
Fruit South Africa rejected the surcharge, asked exporters not to pay and referred Maersk to Transnet for the recovery of their losses.
“The impact on your operations is clearly not due to any action or neglect from producers and/or exporters,” said Anton Rabe, chairperson of Fruit South Africa in a letter to Maersk.
At the same time Fruit South Africa also blamed the disruption caused by the strike on government policies which allow a monopolistic position in the container terminals of the South African ports.
Fruit South Africa says by not allowing other container terminal operators to compete in the country’s ports has now resulted in the country’s exports being held to ransom by a ‘monopolistic Transnet workforce’.
The strike is therefore over but these issues are likely to dominate discussions for some time to come. The immediate priority is to address the backlog which has been caused by the strike and industry sources have warned that the effects could be felt for the next few months.
