[miningmx.com] – THE stakes are incredibly high in the wage talks stalemate between Northam Platinum and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). In the unlikely event of fashioning an politically elegant “entente cordiale’, it seems one of the parties will have to lose.
In the somewhat heightened labour climate at the moment, which extends to Cosatu as a whole and which must be profoundly distracting to the NUM’s central command, any kind of losing is bad; weakness is terminal.
If Northam relents on its “final offer’ of a 8% to 9% average wage increase for workers at its Zondereinde mine, it will not only suffer the negative economic consequences, but embolden (or challenge) the labour sector as a whole to extract similar outcomes.
It may even become a re-run of Lonmin’s much-criticised wage agreement last year which eased the pressure on the company in the short-term, but caused umbrage for the sector in the long-term.
For NUM, the political fall out is unspeakably high. Bowing to Northam’s final offer will provide more substance to the widely-held view that the NUM is a movement in decline. Hence its refusal to accept 8% to 9% at Zondereinde even though it accepted a similar agreement at Aquarius Platinum’s Kroondal a few months ago.
You would like to think the South African government could intervene, perhaps by parachuting copies of Kgalema Motlanthe’s framework agreement which, although it doesn’t provide for specific guidance on wage negotiations, does have the following as a guiding principle:
“Workers, the unemployed and vulnerable groups are the biggest losers in unstable economic conditions. Our experience from 2008 global financial crisis highlights that job losses are often difficult to reverse and that regaining market share is not easy for firms given the high levels of global competition’.
It goes on to say that in order to “succeed’, the framework agreement requires stakeholders dedicate “. the necessary capacity and time; accept that economic realities constrain our decisions; and communicate their commitments as well as progress in implementation consistently and strongly to their members’.
Communication is an issue worth coming back to; for now, however, one has to accept it’s unrealistic to expect Motlanthe to turn up every time there’s a wage dispute, framework agreement held aloft..
In any event, the deputy president is in Canada where he’s holding the first of three days of meetings with Canadian investors in an attempt to have them take a greater interest in South Africa’s mining sector. What will he say about the labour situation, or the efficacy of the framework agreement which extols the virtue of communication?
Communication, of a sort, was foremost in the mind of Northam Platinum’s executives at the weekend when the company decided to publish two adverts on why it couldn’t further increase its wage offer at Zondereinde. In retrospect, it was a false step. One can understand the need to broaden the debate, but NUM seized on the moment.
Meat and drink to NUM: Northam had broken ranks with protocol; had acted outside the spirit of talks; had wasted money in order to gain the upperhand politically. It even took the liberty of chastising Northam’s CEO, Glyn Lewis, for vainglory – as inaccurate an accsuastion as one is likely to find.
Yet taking the wage dispute into the newspapers was outside the framework agreement too. The NUM and Northam have lost the plot.
There is, of course, only one solution which is to get back to the table, have the matter arbitrated, and find some means of shifting the focus away from 8% or 9% or 22% and including benefits that make an outcome an honourable draw. Not quite an entente cordiale, but at the moment all parties are losing.
