[miningmx.com] — THE chances of warring parties imminently signing a
peace agreement to end the violence at Lonmin’s platinum mines seem slim.
Only 4.2% of the company’s workforce reported for duty on Wednesday, while the
stock was trading at an annual low of R70.50 as news started to emerge that 2,000
marching workers have warned Lonmin’s management to close the mines completely
or run the risk of being killed.
Even should the negotiation process lead to the signing of some agreement, it is not
likely to transpire into a lasting solution.
After the massacre on August 16, the workers appointed a committee to act on their
behalf at the peace talks. They subsequently insisted on speaking for themselves,
without the mediation of NUM and Amcu – which shows how tenuous their faith in
even Amcu is.
The problem is that the peace talks will inevitably lead to “substantive” negotiations –
the code word for negotiations over wages and conditions of service. That, after all, is
what led to the massacre in the first place – rock-drill operators demanding wage
increases to R12,500 per month. For substantive negotiations to succeed, workers at
the levels of underground machine operators – who are unskilled and often illiterate –
need the assistance of experienced trade union officials.
The two facilitators, Nerine Kahn and Abdul Soobedaar from the Commission for
Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, know this and they are trying to make up for it
by holding bilateral talks – first with the workers’ committee and then with Lonmin’s
human resources heads, and then back again.
But it’s very difficult to formulate the demands of the workers’ committee and then
give feedback on it. Apparently no progress has been made at this stage.
As for Lonmin, it only has one goal: it wants to get its shafts back into operation.
Even if the mediators or Amcu succeed in persuading the strikers to go back to work,
it’s quite possible there may be large-scale job cuts at Lonmin, with some shafts
closing down completely.
How will the striking workers respond to this?
