Two of South Africa’s biggest trade unions have rejected an improved 6% salary increase offer from state-owned power utility Eskom, their representatives said on Tuesday.

Eskom has dragged on the economy for years, owing to power cuts and the company’s financial troubles, but improved performance from its coal-fired power stations has halted outages and brought the first annual profit in eight years.

The company began talks with three major unions last year and last month offered a pay increase of 5.5%.

That was raised to 6% during a third round of talks last week but was rejected by National Union of Mineworkers members, union spokesman Livhuwani Mammburu said on Tuesday.

The NUM had made a revised demand for 12%, reduced from an initial 15%, far above South African annual inflation that stood at 3.6% in December.

“It’s not Eskom management that ended load shedding, it’s the workers, and we feel that they must be rewarded for their hard work,” Mammburu said.

Irvin Jim, general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), said his union had also rejected the offer. “We don’t accept the current offer on the table,” he said, adding that further talks were scheduled for Thursday.

Wage deal

A third union, Solidarity, declined to comment, citing the sensitive state of negotiations. An Eskom spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Read: Ramaphosa presses ahead with Eskom break-up

Eskom, which reached a three-year pay deal in 2023 that increased non-managerial employees’ salaries by 7% each year, is seeking another multi-year wage deal. — Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo, (c) 2026 Reuters

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