"The management has called a meeting this afternoon which we are going to attend but that will not stop the strike from continuing. Their aim is to try and avert the strike," Communication Workers Union general secretary Gallant Roberts said earlier.

Media Workers Association of SA (Mwasa) general secretary Ernest Dlamini said: "We have just finished picketing outside the Auckland Park SABC head offices and are going to the meeting with management. Hopefully they will give us what we want," he said.

Dlamini said hundreds of SABC workers picketed between 1pm and 2pm outside the Auckland Park offices and the regions had also joined in.

The unions went to the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration when the SABC revised a 12.2 percent multi-term pay offer it was supposed to have implemented in April to 8.5 percent.

The Labour Court in Johannesburg dismissed a bid by the SABC last week to stop its workers from striking.

SABC radio news reported that workers were dancing, singing and wielding placards with messages that they were "tired of being paid peanuts". Passing motorists hooted in support of the march.

Roberts said if the unions failed to reach an agreement on Wednesday, workers would embark on a bigger march on 14 July from the union's offices in the Johannesburg inner city to Auckland Park.

Sapa

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