[miningmx.com] – PERVERSE though it may sound, there are reasons to be cheerful about recent developments regarding the enigmatic, but much-discussed Associated Mineworkers & Construction Union (AMCU).
Its decision to delay arbitration with Lonmin at the Council of Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) in favour of further discussions with government over its draft framework agreement setting new rules of engagement with business is a positive development.
It means strike action at Lonmin is delayed, and notwithstanding government’s crucial (dare one ask, decisive?) intervention in the past month, it presages an “out of court’ agreement with Lonmin.
Miningmx is led to understand that AMCU and Lonmin are closer to a final recognition agreement than may be at first obvious, and that one shouldn’t be blind-sided by the government’s framework agreement, dismissed by one industry insider as “just another peace deal’.
In fact, an agreement between AMCU and Lonmin may have come sooner, but for the murder of a NUM shop steward near Marikana three weeks ago.
Secondly, the cost to company effects of gold wage demands submitted by AMCU for entry-level workers are not so far from those framed by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) earlier this month.
Exorbitant, yes, especially for an industry that is currently underwater on a stay-in-business capital basis, but at least it helps modify the recent view that AMCU’s opening position on gold demands is one of recalcitrant extremism.
Knowing this comes as a comfort; a cold comfort perhaps given the unsustainably high demands they ask of the gold sector, but the NUM’s recent willingness to settle for single-digit wage increases at Aquarius Platinum – about 7.5% to 8% – suggests there’s more political mouth than trousers to the opening positions of the two unions.
Thirdly, AMCU has committed itself to gold industry central bargaining. That’s important because it brings AMCU in from the cold. Yet, there’s a flip-side to every aspect of labour-employer relations these days.
One industry source remarks that Joseph Mathunjwa, AMCU’s president, has “a psychological aversion to the pen’. In other words, seating Mathunjwa at the table doesn’t guarantee he’ll still be there for dessert.
Yet seated he is. Now begins the process of negotiation.
The central bargaining process generally increases the power of unions as opposed to standalone or one-on-one discussions. That means gold wage negotiations may stretch from winter to spring, especially as these negotiations are bound to see all manner of political posturing between unions. But it’s a start.
