The Metal and Engineering Industries Bargaining Council, known as the MEIBC, administers collective agreements for the metal and engineering sector and resolves disputes between employers and employees in it. It runs a national office in Johannesburg and a set of regional offices, and the region matters more than the national number for most enquiries.
Official contact channels
- National office: 011 639 8000
- National office address: 1st Floor, Metal Industries House, 42 Anderson Street, Johannesburg, 2001
- Tshwane region: 012 407 3700, or [email protected]
- Cape Town region: 021 421 6140
- Free State and Northern Cape region: 057 352 4142
- Border region: 043 743 7747
- Mpumalanga region: [email protected]
Contact the region that covers your workplace rather than the national office. Dispute referrals, con-arb hearings and agent visits are handled regionally, and the national office will route you back to a region in any case.
The council also publishes fax numbers beside several of the regional telephone numbers. Those are not repeated here, because an 086 number sitting next to a landline in a contact block is usually a fax and dialling it as a voice line achieves nothing.
What this organisation provides
- Administration of the Main Agreement for the metal and engineering industry, and other collective agreements including lift agreements
- Dispute resolution between employers and employees in the sector
- Administration of the industry Provident Fund, Sick Pay Fund and pension arrangements
- Collection of the administration levy and the collective bargaining levy
- An agent verification facility, for checking that someone presenting as a council agent genuinely is one
The agent verification service is worth knowing about. Council agents visit workplaces to check compliance, and the council publishes a way to verify them, which is the sensible response to anyone arriving unannounced and claiming that authority.
If your question is about provident fund or sick pay benefits rather than about a dispute, say so at the outset. Those are administered as funds with their own records and processes, separate from the dispute resolution side.
Address and operating information
- National office: 1st Floor, Metal Industries House, 42 Anderson Street, Johannesburg, postal code 2001
- Tshwane region: 255 Pretorius Street, 4th Floor, JSL Towers, Pretoria, 0001
- Cape Town region: 276 Durban Road, Golden Manor Building, 3rd Floor, Bellville, 7530
- Further regions published by the council include Midlands, Border, Witbank in Mpumalanga, and Free State with Northern Cape
- No public office hours are published
Take documents to the region rather than posting them nationally. A dispute referral is date-sensitive, and lodging it at the correct regional office is what fixes the date for the purposes of the time limits.
Support and escalation routes
- Disputes in the metal and engineering sector are referred to the council rather than to the CCMA, because a bargaining council with jurisdiction displaces the CCMA for that sector
- Where the council has no jurisdiction over a particular employer or dispute, the CCMA is the correct forum
- Unresolved council arbitration outcomes are reviewed by the Labour Court
- Non-compliance by an employer with a collective agreement is enforced by the council through its own compliance process
That jurisdiction point catches people out. Referring a metal industry dismissal to the CCMA when the MEIBC covers the employer wastes time, and the referral has to be lodged again at the council, by which point a thirty day limit may have passed.
Sources
- MEIBC contact page, meibc.co.za, read 3 September 2026