About 50 workers, mostly forklift drivers, are taking Heineken Beverages to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.
- About 50 workers at Heineken Beverages, which recently merged with Distell, acquire taken the company to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.
- The workers are on flexible contracts with Vericon Outsourcing and want to be employed permanently.
- Heineken has said it will try to find an amicable resolution.
About 50 workers at Heineken Beverages, which recently merged with one of South Africa’s largest alcohol producers, Distell, gain lodged a dispute with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) to procure 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. Popular brands merged with Heineken include J.C Le Roux, Klipdrift, Savannah, Hunters and Nederburg wines. The merger also included the acquisition of Namibia Breweries.
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 believe access to benefits such as a provident fund. The worker, who did not want to be identified for alarm of victimisation, has worked at Distell, now Heineken, since 2020 as a forklift operator.
In approving the merger, the Competition Tribunal set several
© 2024 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and finish not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article. We place an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. Every analytics tools are solely on our servers. We execute not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We execute not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please execute not delete the invisible pixel.
Bearded Angler
Van, startled, spins around and answers the rep, \”It\’s my donkey\’s ears. When they walk under the highway their ears rub along the roof and hurt them. I\’m making it taller so that doesn\’t happen\”.
The rep looking confused, because it\’s a dirt track that runs under the bridge, asks him, \”Why don\’t you grade or dig some of the soil to lower the surface so they can pass through without their ears touching?\”
Van – no the one looking confused then angry answers, \”No man, it\’s their ears that are too long, not their legs!\”
Slug-Em-Dog
Bra / Bru – friend. This term is commonly used to call a friend, pal or buddy.