East London businesses were still quantifying their losses on Wednesday as the taxi strike forced production to a standstill at several factories throughout the region.
Many of these firms, which contribute significantly to the province’s economy, were forced to shut as employees struggled to get to work due to Wednesday’s taxi shutdown.
Johnson & Johnson site leader Cindy Carter said they had halted production from Tuesday evening until Wednesday evening, in consideration of their 180 employees, who mostly rely on public transport.
“We have opted to take precautionary measures and close the factory from as early as last night, because we had to consider staff coming from night shift too, as well as the day shift staff. We considered hiring transport for our staff, but we were concerned about their safety in the likelihood of severe protesting, none of which seems to have occurred,” she said.
Carter said the pharmaceutical manufacturer would not be running at an extensive loss, and would recover by the end of the week without making their employees work extensive overtime. “We can just manage with the strike happening for a day, but more than that would obviously have steeper implications and give us a greater losses, causing staff to work longer hours – not exceeding the legal limit of course – and would result in price hikes.”
Mercedes-Benz SA also halted production for the safety of their employees, which number around 3,500.
But they declined to comment on how the strike had affected the manufacturing company, which produces and exports premium cars.
“Production will resume as scheduled on Thursday.
“Please understand that we cannot publicly comment on our production figures due to the competitive nature of the industry and the sensitivity of the information,” said spokesperson Thato Mntambo.
Mntambo said the company, together with Numsa, would use the framework of the Siyaphambili agreement to reach consensus on how to recover production.
First National Battery CEO Russel Bezuidenhout said their manufacturing company did not close, but experienced 80% absenteeism which halted production.
“While there has been no production running with the day shift, we are expecting things to pick up for the evening shift,” he said.
Other companies affected were confectionery factory Nestle and pharmaceutical company Aspen, although attempts to get official comment from those concerned were unsuccessful.
Border-Kei Chamber of Business president Les Holbrook said while many people didn’t bother going to work, the strike mainly affected lower and middle income workers from townships and villages and strongly affected manufacturers as opposed to retail outlets.
“Workers who stayed away would have been badly affected because the principle of ‘no work no pay’ would have applied.”..