Implats burns as NUM loses hold on members

[miningmx.com] — THE rest of South Africa’s platinum sector would be
well advised to keep a close eye on the strike at Impala Platinum (Implats) in
Rustenburg, because it could easily spread to other parts of the industry.

By Monday the strike had already claimed two lives, with another 40 people injured in
violence and assaults. By February 14, the loss in turnover as a result of the strike
had reached R1.2bn after just three weeks. The work stoppage is going to continue
for at least another three to four weeks.

As with most spontaneous strikes that flare up where the required dispute resolution
procedures have not been followed, this stoppage has a multitude of underlying
reasons.

For one, Implats’s labour union recognition limit of 50% plus one – which excludes
any minority trade union at Implats, is among the most obvious causes.

It’s also clear that the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which has a monopoly
at Implats due to the recognition limit, does not communicate properly with the
workforce and does not serve the interests of all the workers equally.

The NUM, the country’s largest and possibly most efficient trade union, could in fact
suffer more harm from this strike than Implats.

“The NUM no longer holds mass meetings to get a mandate for wage negotiations.
They simply call the trade union supervisors together and let the supervisors draw up
the agenda for the negotiations,’ said a source in the trade union who asked to
remain anonymous.

The trade union supervisors are mostly employees in the C-band; miners, tradesmen
and officials. In other words, workers in the highest job levels of the bargaining unit.

Two years ago, during the previous strike at Implats, one of the NUM’s vice-
presidents, Piet Matosa, lost an eye after a stone was thrown at him as he was
trying to convince workers to accept a wage offer. Matosa also suffered serious
facial injuries.

The current strike is now in its fifth week. It started with the rock drill operators, but
no NUM leader has yet risked addressing a mass meeting for ordinary members;
especially not the rock drill operators.

Anyone from the NUM head office in Johannesburg who will dare to do that at this
stage will be risking his life.

There has been tension between the NUM head office and its members in the
platinum industry since 2007. That’s because former Deputy General-Secretary,
Archie Palane, was thrown out of the race for the position of general secretary on a
technicality at the time.

Frans Baleni, the incumbent, was the only other candidate. Baleni was certainly not
without support and would quite possibly have won the election in any case. But
since there never was an election, no one knows this for certain.

The platinum industry was Palane’s power base. He was also the driving force behind
the establishment of a formal bargaining council for the whole mining industry. The
trade union’s North-West structures and its members in this province are bitter about
that to this day.

The strike began with Implats’s rock drill operators when they heard that the miners
had received a special adjustment of 18%.

There are three operators’ job levels: rock drill operators, panel operators and winch
operators, who clear up the ore and waste rock after underground blasting.

The rock drill operators’ work is more physically challenging than that of the other
two operator job levels. That’s why there have been difficulties for many years to
appoint rock drill operators.

Dr Annah Kgaswane, a metallurgist at Implats, made disturbing findings in a study for
a management degree in 2006: more than 40% of rock drill operators are older than
45 years, another 40% are between 35 and 45 years old and 20% have been rock
drill operators for more than 25 years.

In order to attract younger candidates, rock drill operators’ wages are now R300 to
R350 a month more than those for the other two operators’ jobs, but this hasn’t
really helped. Young people aren’t interested in these jobs. It’s hard, dangerous
work.

This is not only Implats’s problem. Everywhere in underground mines, but especially in
platinum mines, it’s a challenge to keep these positions filled.

Unofficial sources at Implats say that during last year’s wage negotiations there
were definitely requests to push the wages of rock drill operators still higher, but the
NUM’s representatives were not in favour of that.

“There’s nothing special about rock drill operators. The money set aside for them
should rather be distributed equally among the rest of the workforce,’ NUM
negotiators apparently responded.

Remember, the Implats trade union shop stewards – from whom the NUM’s
negotiators get mandates – are mostly in the C-band (highest) job levels. In fact,
not one of them comes from the ranks of the rock drill operators.

The two chairmen of the shop stewards’ committee, a certain Yster and Jeffrey
Thamsa, are both miners, whose wages were quietly adjusted by 18% after the
wage negotiations.

Yster is apparently the chairman of the shop stewards’ committee at Implats’s north
shaft. He even has an office in one of the hostels, but during the strike two weeks
ago, he was physically lifted up in his office chair, carried out of the hostel and put
down outside. The strikers locked his office, and he has not been there again.

Of course, the NUM denies this most vehemently, but it is now told among the rock
drill operators that the trade union shop stewards divided the increase for the rock
drill operators among themselves.

“You don’t become a NUM trade union shop steward in a big mining group like Implats
without a lot of power and influence. It’s frightening to see these people, who are
always brimming with confidence, now walking about panic-stricken. They are
literally frightened to appear in public,’ a source said on Monday.

Between 10 and 12 years ago, Joseph Mathunjwa, a NUM trade union shop steward
at BHP Billiton’s Douglas colliery, formed the Association of Mining and Construction
Union (AMCU) after a serious dispute with former Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe
about labour cuts.

AMCU has since been the only trade union that represents Douglas’s employees. In
the past decade it has also attracted a fairly large number of members away from
the NUM at other collieries and chromium mines in Mpumalanga.

People who know Mathunjwa well say he is extremely charismatic and strategically
very, very crafty.

He decided earlier that he was going to steal the NUM away from Mantashe. The
distance between the NUM head office in Johannesburg and the platinum mines – the
single largest group in the mining industry and the strongest growth point – was like
manna from heaven for him.

AMCU already has organising rights at Lonmin, which is right next door to Implats’s
mines.

– Sake24