About 51 workers at Masterpack, a Bidvest-owned packaging company in Johannesburg, have been on strike since Monday, 7 September 2026, demanding a 9% across-the-board wage increase and the return of annual bonuses not paid for six years.
The strike, first reported by GroundUp, was confirmed by Sipho Linda, an organiser for the General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA), who said wage negotiations with management reached a deadlock on 21 August 2026.
Linda told GroundUp that the roughly 30 GIWUSA members and 21 workers from the Allied Workers Union of South Africa (AWUSA) “could not accept less than a 9% wage increase”.
Management has offered a tiered increase: 6% for employees earning under R12,000, 5.5% for those between R12,000 and R15,000, and 5% for workers above R15,000.
Linda said the offer “is not enough to live on”, adding that some general workers take home around R5,000 a month.
“The salaries for general workers, who are the engine of the company, are not helpful in an economic situation where the cost of living continues to go up.”
Workers are also demanding the reinstatement of shift allowances and annual bonuses, which they say have not been paid since before the Covid-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, annual increases were between 7% and 8%, but have since dropped to about 5%.
An unnamed general worker and mother of two told GroundUp, “Their profits are huge. School, transport and food have gone up so much, but we are given peanuts.”
Employees also report heavier workloads following past retrenchments, saying staff now operate multiple machines.
Masterpack did not respond to queries from GroundUp at the time of publication. Cape Flats News has reached out independently and will update this story when a response is received.
A meeting between union representatives, Masterpack, and bargaining council commissioners is scheduled for 23 September 2026. It remains unclear whether management will table a revised offer before that date.