PRETORIA. The national metal-workers strike seems set to continue after union leaders discovered today that their demand of a 13% increase was far less than they thought. “We assumed the percent sign was capitalist shorthand for nine zeroes,” explained a spokesman. “We want a 13-billion % raise.” He also confirmed that NUM had arrived at the number 13 by counting all the fingers on both hands of their leader.
The powerful labour union has meanwhile reiterated its threat that if it doesn’t get a 13% increase it will demand a 20% (approximately 20-billion-fold) increase, unicorns for union leaders to ride to work on, a ball-pond in the break-room, unlimited Jolly-Jammers, and the vote.
Political analyst Adriaan Fencesitter attributed the mathematical mix-up to South Africa’s “tragic legacy of crap education”.
“Most of NUM’s members only ever learned to count to about seven, which was the average number of empty beer bottles that would lie strewn around their unconscious teachers where they lay face down on the playground with their pants round their ankles,” he explained.
He added that the issue was further confused by senior NUM leadership.
“NUM vice-president Jobsworth Shopsteward-Nkosi has thirteen fingers, so it’s kind of normal to trend in that direction,” he said. “And of course their chief negotiator, Chief Negotiator Marawa, has 13 fingers and toes after his tragic tango with a hedge trimmer in 1982.”
NUM’s demands have received major support from Cosatu – a business for people who earn a living from talking about working rather than doing it.
According to Cosatu’s new head of economic policy, sangoma and part-time Avon representative Ndifuna Imali, a 13-billion percent increase was not unreasonable, given information that came to him in a vision while he was waxing Zwelinzima Vavi’s back.
“The capitalists and their running-dog rentier ganglords in the white middle class keep saying, ‘The country can’t afford this, there isn’t enough money’,” said Imali. “But I have seen a machine called a printing press, that literally draws new money on paper.”
He said that this money was stored in secret “capitalist hordes” called “banks”.
“There is more money in these banks than there are grains of sand on a Durban beachfront hot-dog,” he said. “The banks contain literally hundreds of Rands. So don’t tell us you can’t afford it!”
Meanwhile the industries affected by the strike – which include car-makers and fetish lingerie manufacturers – say they are considering various strategies for dealing with NUM’s demands.
“At the moment Plan A is to cut banknotes in half,” explained labour broker Rampant X. Ploitation. “That way the bla – I mean, the workers – think they’re getting twice as much.
“I mean, it worked with our 3-year-old siblings back in the 60s, and these people are really just like big kids when you think about it…”
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