NUMSA condemns the Road Accident Fund for lying about NUMSA’s scope

19 March 2024

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has noted the lies which the Road Accident Fund spokesperson Mcintosh Polela uttered in an interview on Power Fm on Friday 15 March 2024, regarding NUMSA’s registered scope. It was also noted that he, rather absurdly, now attempts to blame the mismanagement of RAF on NUMSA members. He has even gone as far as falsely claiming that the union is sabotaging the RAF by not processing court orders. In this regard he stated the following:

“We have an avalanche of many court orders which are … we have to respond to.  And members of NUMSA who are part of our staff, they hold them back, so that by the time they come to the desk of the CEO, the date at which they could have been defended has already passed. “

When asked by the anchor, Pabi Moloi why NUMSA would deliberately not process court orders, he said:

“The thinking behind it is that if you have grievances against an organization, you are going to make sure that you sabotage it so that it looks like it is not fit for purpose.”

NUMSA rejects this pathetic attempt at inversion, blame shifting and refusal by RAF management to be accountable and accept responsibility for the gross mismanagement of the RAF, for what it is.

The management of RAF has resorted to scapegoating workers and outright lying in response to the issues that we have raised about the mismanagement of the entity.  (It was noted that Polela at least had the decency of conceding on air that many of NUMSA’s grievances are in fact legitimate). Instead of confronting their failure, RAF’s top management is attempting to pass the responsibility onto workers.  For this they must be condemned!

Of immense concern is that RAF now went much further and resorted to blatant untruths. On eNCA on 14 March 2024 during an interview with Sindy Mabe, Mr. Polela falsely claimed that NUMSA should not be organising at the RAF on the basis of alleging that NUMSA’s constitution does not allow for it to organise at RAF. This is factually untrue and we reject it with the contempt it deserves. RAF repeated the lie in a memo to workers on Thursday.

In an attempt to back up its utterly false claim that NUMSA does not have the right to recruit and collectively bargain at the RAF, RAF submitted an incomplete NUMSA constitution to the Labour Court. This seems to suggest that, someone from RAF deliberately lied under oath, but at the very least misled the Labour Court, and by such means secured an interdict against NUMSA based upon such incorrect statement. The Labour Court accordingly granted RAF an interdict, which blocked the strike and the march, on the basis of false information.

NUMSA will present the Labour Court with the correct facts, which are:

1.  NUMSA was recognised by RAF in 2018 and as part of the recognition process the union submitted its amended constitution, which was signed by the Registrar of the Department of Employment and Labour in 2014. At the 2013 Special National Congress NUMSA changed its scope and decided to organise and recruit workers in the mining, the transportation and infrastructure sector including the value chain. RAF is covered under the transportation sector and the updated constitution was received by them, which is why we were granted recognition.

2. RAF claims that NUMSA should not be organising at the entity because our constitution does not cover transportation in the scope. However, we have noted that the constitution that RAF attached to its Court papers, was incomplete. Page 44 of Annexture B of the NUMSA constitution (which is available on the union’s website), contains the paragraph that refers to the Transportation sector as one of the sectors that the union organizes in. The RAF is covered in that section.  Page 44 of the constitution is missing from the submissions which the RAF made to the court, how convenient! Was this a genuine mistake or a deliberate attempt to mislead the Court? 

3. It is odd that RAF has engaged the union on numerous occasions, even during section 189 restructuring which was held under the auspices of the CCMA last year. Suddenly when workers decide to exercise their right to strike, RAF opportunistically raises this question of scope and uses it as the basis to interdict the strike.  Having been presented with the correct and complete NUMSA Constitution at the time of recognition and given that the NUMSA Constitution is readily available on NUMSA’s website, it is very difficult to accept that this was an innocent mistake. 

More likely is that this is only happening because Mr. Letsoalo wants to bring in a sweetheart union which will rubber stamp his brutal attacks on workers in the workplace. We are told the CEO is consulting with a yellow union from COSATU which has completely misled him on this issue. It seems clear that the RAF CEO has a problem with an active union which is holding him accountable for the continuous mismanagement of the RAF.

Mr. Letsoalo wants to create the illusion to the media and the public that everything at RAF is going well under his leadership, which is not true. To prove this, the sheriff went to the offices of the RAF Menlyn offices as recently as Friday and attached more assets, because of the non-payment of claims. Two weeks ago furniture and the server of the RAF were attached by the sheriff.

NUMSA has been persistent about exposing this and now our members are being punished for being good citizens, and for playing their role in demanding good governance at the entity. It is in our interests to fight for the stability of the RAF because an unstable RAF means that accident victims who desperately need their compensation from RAF will not receive any pay outs. Our members are also justifiably concerned about the long term sustainability of the RAF because if it collapses, they will be out of work.

We have noted that RAF has confirmed in the memo that it is halting the implementation of its unfair restructuring proposals following upon its unfair section 189 process. This dispute was the basis for NUMSA’s intended strike. As such NUMSA’s strike achieved the desired result without even commencing with strike action. 

NUMSA will not accept RAF’s blatant distortion of the truth and misrepresentation to the Labour Court as to NUMSA’s registered scope.  Based upon this untruth RAF is attempting to terminate NUMSA’s recognition. We will be in court soon to fight this injustice and attempt by RAF to silence NUMSA and its members for exercising their freedom of association and their freedom to choose to belong to a union of their own choice.

There is no other way of interpreting this desperate cheap attempt by the CEO of RAF when a union has simply declared a dispute and challenged the employer not to drive a restructuring process that is undermining the job security of workers. Our members are justified to raise concerns about the varying down of their benefits and conditions. Suddenly, overnight, NUMSA must be liquidated out of existence in RAF for standing up for workers’ rights which is the inherent duty of a union that acts in the interest of its members.

This we regard as nothing else but a blatant, now open, now hidden agenda of an employer who has arrogantly decided to be anti-worker, and is union bashing, and this type of attitude has no place in the history of industrial relations in this country. This we reject with the contempt it deserves. It is an agenda and a propaganda that belongs in the dustbin of history of the old Apartheid past, where workers were not allowed to join a union of their own choice. NUMSA is at the RAF and it is here to stay.

#HandsoffNUMSA

(For more on the RAF and the demands made by NUMSA members, watch the latest episode of ‘Workers Power’.

Link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHmm02PBgts).

Aluta continua!

The struggle continues!

Issued by Irvin Jim, NUMSA General Secretary, 19 March 2024