Eskom's wage increase offer of 5.5 percent was rejected by trade union Solidarity on Wednesday.

"Wage negotiations have reached a deadlock," the union said.

Solidarity was now demanding that Eskom bring "a new, workable mandate from management" to the next round of negotiations.

According to the union, during the first round of wage negotiations, Eskom had blamed "the poor wage offer" on the current and planned expansion of the company's power plants and the shortage of funding.

Solidarity said that although the development of power stations was urgently needed, the company could not neglect its extremely valuable and knowledgeable employees.

"According to Eskom's 2008 annual report, the company needed more than 1400 new employees in critical, core and scarce skills for 2009 alone.

"By 2013, the company will have to appoint a total of almost 3000 additional employees in critical, core and scarce skills," Solidarity said.

It added that the electricity parastatal competed for skills in the industry with countries such as China and India, and poor salaries and wage increases would definitely not attract employees to the company.

"Instead, this will eventually lead to experts rather looking for work elsewhere," Solidarity spokesperson Jaco Kleynhans said.

The union said it had had "great expectations" for the wage negotiations but the current wage offer was "far below the current inflation figure".

Meanwhile, Solidarity said it had evidence that Eskom's management had received wage increases of 25 percent last year and that was exactly why the current offer of 5.5 percent was unacceptable.

The union added that in the next round of negotiations, it would tackle the current problems with contract work at Eskom.

"Solidarity states that the poor quality of contract work at Eskom is costing the electricity supplier millions and that Eskom should now rather invest in high-quality, skilled employees for the company itself."

According to Solidarity wage negotiations will resume in two week's time.

Eskom spokesperson Fani Zulu confirmed that the parastatal had commenced wage negotiations with unions ? including Solidarity.

"We still have some ground to cover and when we come to the end we will find one another and reach an amicable settlement," said Zulu.

"That is the nature of negotiations ? you both start at different points and then in the end you find a solution."