From AlJazeera

South Africa’s largest union has called for more than 200,000 engineering and metals workers to lay down tools for higher wages from July 1, just days after the mining sector ended a five-month strike.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) said on Thursday that it had “agreed to the decision from our members to embark on an indefinite strike action, beginning on July 1, 2014.”

“We are going to strike, we are going to bring the industry to a standstill,” said Karl Cloete, the deputy general secretary of the Numsa.

Cloete said wage negotiations in the sector were deadlocked, with workers demanding a 12-percent wage increase, reduced from an initial demand of 15 percent.

More than 220,000 workers of Numsa’s 340,000-strong members will down tools in the key power generation, electrical engineering, telecommunications, steel and plastic fabrication industries.

Employees of the car-manufacturing industry, which already suffered serious stoppages last year, will not take part in the strike, but the sector is likely to be affected when component workers down tools.

Numsa also called for a stoppage at Eskom, the state-owned power utility, paying negotiations were deadlocked over the firm’s proposed wage increase of 5.6 percent for its 10,000 staff.

South Africa’s public utility workers are banned from striking because their industry is classified as essential service.

Read more at Aljazeera