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Cape Town - Ceres Fruit Growers, one of South Africa’s biggest packing and storage companies for apples and pears, is depleting stocks as a pay strike by members curbs operations.
While the company has managed to meet orders and to export items in cold storage, this “will no longer be possible as time progresses as stocks are running low,” managing director Francois Malan said in an e-mailed response to questions on Thursday.
Share of profit
“All aspects of the business are now impacted upon by this strike".
Ceres’s brands include Tru-Cape apples and pears.
Members of the Food and Allied Workers Union at the company have been on strike since the start of September, demanding a 12.5% increase in pay.
Fawu has said it could settle for a lower raise if its members get a share of profit. The annual inflation rate in South Africa was 4.6% in August.
Half of Ceres’s 800 employees are Fawu members, Malan said.
Unionised workers staged a march to the Ceres municipality on Wednesday to hand over a memorandum of demands, Malan said.
Profit share
The union’s demands equate to a 9% increase and a R1 000 annual profit share per person, said spokesperson Dominique Martin. Employees earn a minimum of R896 weekly, she said.
While the producer can’t yet quantify the losses as a result of the strike, the damage to property “already amounts to millions of rands,” the Ptcompany said in a statement.
