COSATU and NUM statement on the current wildcat strikes in the mining industry with the full support of the SACP
The members of COSATU affiliates and the NUM in particular will recall that the COSATU 11th National Congress held in September 2012 adopted a special resolution on the Lonmin (Marikana) Platinum mine tragedy, the mining industry, and general poverty wages. We attach the declaration for easy reference.
The wildcat strikes have since spread from platinum mines to the gold mines in Gauteng and the Free State.
We reiterate what we said in the congress - that it is the mine employers in general and Impala bosses in particular who must take full responsibility for all the strikes that are spreading in the mining industry. Impala committed a grave error in offering an 18% increase to one category (miners) to the exclusion of the rest of the workers of Impala and, more seriously, outside the collective bargaining process.
Expectations have been raised not by the NUM but by the employers and the recent mine workers' strikes are a response to the employers' miscalculation.
We wish to emphasize that the employers have made a grave error that now threatens every foundation of the industrial relations systems in the country. The collective bargaining system is currently under threat not because of the NUM but because the employers miscalculated. Lonmin should have known that getting wage negotiations to be facilitated by the churches and allowing everybody, no matter their legal status, to play a role in the negotiations will create precedents that they will not be willing to repeat anywhere else. In the process a wrong impression was created that the Lonmin deal was negotiated by AMCU and the churches and that workers received close to their demand of R12 500. Nothing can be further to the truth. The reality is that it is the NUM that won a 10% increase on wages for Lonmin workers and it is the NUM that agreed that the negotiations be brought forward so that current demands of workers can be accommodated.
Now that workers on their own have embarked on unprotected strikes, the NUM, with the active support of COSATU, have an obligation to lead the workers who are on strike and to channel their demands to the employers, so that a lasting solution can be found.
While the NUM does not endorse unprotected industrial action, and did not encourage such an action precisely because it opens workers to attacks from the employers, it must be said that the source of all of these upheavals is the pathetic levels of pay and working conditions mineworkers are subjected to. The NUM and COSATU are fully behind all the legitimate demands of the mineworkers for better pay and improved working conditions.
The NUM leadership have already engaged with the Chamber of Mines and demanded that the negotiations on wages and conditions of employment be reopened or that the existing agreement, lapsing in 2013, is brought forward. The NUM met the CoM on 21st September 2012. A second meeting with the full NUM Chamber negotiating team for Gold and Coal will be on 3 October 2012.
We have developed a programme to address and consult with all mineworkers on this process.
In the meantime we have taken forward the COSATU National Congress demand that a high-powered commission of inquiry be established. The terms of reference of this commission must be to "investigate the employment and social conditions of workers in the mining industry historically and at present".
The Chamber of Mines, the Department of Minerals and Energy and the leadership of the ANC have since in principle endorsed the need for the commission. Consultation will proceed with all stakeholders to finalise its terms of reference before an appropriate announcement is made.
COSATU and the NUM will ensure that all these processes are driven with the necessary urgency to ensure a speedy resolution of the current situation. We are aware that a failure to resolve these issues as soon as possible will threaten the future not only of the mining industry but the jobs of hundreds of thousands of mineworkers.
We accordingly call on the Chamber of Mines to waste no more time before engaging with the NUM and other unions in the mining industry to ensure that a lasting solution is found to the current stalemate. Dismissal of workers is not a solution to the crisis the mining industry is facing.
Accordingly we call on all mine companies contemplating taking short cuts such as mass dismissals of workers to desist from carrying out such threats but instead to join us to save the future of collective bargaining in our country, which is currently threatened by the mistake committed by some of the employers themselves.
Current challenges
The country and the world must note that as the Commission of Inquiry meets to look at the violence and intimidation in the mines that led to the death of 46 workers, the wave of violence and intimidation has not subsided.
There has been reports of violent incidents in and around Rustenburg, where the Branch chairperson Khomanani is still in hospital), in Westrand, where a steward has been dragged from his room and shot at close range; he is in hospital, and in the Free State where five workers were injured last week.
There are potential threats of dismissals at Angloplats, Goldfields, Rasebone, and AGA.
Statement issued by NUM, October 2 2012
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