Photo by: Bloomberg
The recent six-week-long strike in South Africa’s automotive manufacturing industry had been “very unfortunate”, said General Motors South Africa (GMSA) MD Mario Spangenberg on Tuesday night.
Speaking at a GMSA dinner in Johannesburg, he said labour instability was one of the red flags for the South African automotive industry moving forward.
“I’m glad it was finally settled. I hope that the stability agreed to in the labour deal is observed, and that we can move forward constructively as an industry. We need to put the industry back on the growth path.”
Spangenberg said the strike action in the assembly and component manufacturing industries had “left a bad taste in all international boardrooms. There is a lot of competition in the automotive industry in the world”.
He said it was essential that the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa and government understood that “this kind of action was not constructive for effectiveness in the automotive industry”.
General Motors lost production of 4 000 Isuzu pickups, Chevrolet Utility bakkies and Spark passenger cars during the labour action.