The biggest union at South Africa’s Eskom is demanding a wage increase of as much as 15% ahead of negotiations that are set to begin.

The National Union of Mineworkers, representing about 15 000 employees at the State-owned utility, has submitted demands before the central bargaining forum, according to Khangela Baloyi, energy sector coordinator for the labour group.

The wage demand, which is more than four times the rate of inflation, follows Eskom’s stabilisation of the power grid after years of record blackouts. The utility last week reported its first profit in eight years and plans to raise debt after relying on billions of dollars of government bailouts. South African inflation stood at 3.3% in August.

Eskom officials didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Wage talks could stall early over Eskom’s proposal to let unbundled and legally separated entities establish their own union recognition agreements, according to Baloyi. “Decentralising of the bargaining will kill the trade unions,” he said, adding that the union wants all entities to conform to agreements made with Eskom’s holding company.

Eskom has been undergoing a years-long process to split into generation, transmission and distribution units, in a strategy to make the business profitable and open the system to electricity trading that includes private producers.

Previous wage talks proved difficult for the utility, even when it claimed to lack the funding for increases. Labour agreed to a 7% annual raise for three years in the midst of acute electricity outages. The current wage agreement is set to expire in June 2026.