OVER 200,000 South African engineering and metal workers will walk out on indefinite strike tomorrow morning, after their union Numsa reported “no progress with negotiations.”

The union’s national executive committee said last week that its negotiators had engaged with employers for two months before declaring a dispute on May 30.

It accused employer bodies of remaining “stubborn and intransigent.”

The strike, which forms part of the union’s living wage campaign, calls for a 12 per cent rise, reduced from 15 per cent originally, a one-year bargaining agreement, an end to agency work and a pay settlement that benefits all workers, whether salaried or waged.

“The decision to embark on the strike action was solicited through a democratic and transparent process, owing to our founding traditions of being a worker-controlled and democratic trade union,” said Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim.

“It has never been in our agenda to call a strike. This strike has been imposed on us. 

“Ours is to use the strike as part of a tactic to exert organisational pressure to the bosses, to return to the table and present an offer acceptable to our members.”

Numsa members and supporters will hold a number of marches and plant-based protests across the country today to build solidarity with the strike demands.

Sectors including telecoms, electrical engineering, steel and plastics will be affected by the strike.