LONMIN Plc (LMI) is waiting to be served with a strike notice by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) if the world’s third-biggest platinum producer doesn’t agree to the labour organisation’s demands.
‘We are still waiting for the final response from Lonmin,’ AMCU General Secretary Jeff Mphahlele said. ‘The 48-hour strike notice will depend on the response we get.’
The union’s demands are for organisational privileges at the Marikana mine near Rustenburg, 116 kilometres (72 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, at the expense of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), an ally of the ruling African National Congress (ANC).
The AMCU has unseated the NUM as the biggest union in the platinum industry in South Africa.
The change isn’t yet formally recognised by the London-based Lonmin, which says it favours multi-union representation.
A strike would mean no production at Lonmin’s 13-shaft Marikana mine, the site of violent protests in which at least 44 people died last year.
‘Lonmin has not received formal notice of strike from the AMCU,’ spokeswoman Sue Vey said. ‘The company will act in the interests of employees to prevent a strike. We are, however, confident that an agreement can be reached through continued negotiations.’
Any work stoppage would be illegal after a Johannesburg labour court ruled that the NUM has until July 16 to regain its majority among the workforce, Lonmin Executive Vice-President of Mining Mark Munroe said in a statement on June 6th.
Three Lonmin workers, including one from each union, have been killed in the past month. Work at the operation was halted for two days in May after an AMCU official was shot.
The AMCU has said any Lonmin union retaining 35 per cent membership among the workforce should gain organisational privileges.
A 45 per cent threshold should be met for wage-bargaining rights and 50 per cent plus one to negotiate on other issues on behalf of all workers.
Lonmin has agreed to the recognition thresholds proposed by AMCU for lower-skilled workers but wants to keep intact the existing 20 per cent membership requirement for categories including officials and artisans. Lonmin employs 27,000 staff and a further 10,000 contractors.
The AMCU represents 70 per cent of lower-skilled workers at the company.
The AMCU has grown rapidly in the past 18 months at the expense of the NUM after the latter supported the government in it’s attacks on striking miners.
The NUM has been a reliable partner for the ANC throughout the two decades since the end of apartheid and a crucial factor in securing them votes.
The strikes in South Africa’s mines last year cost platinum and gold producers billions of rand in lost output, resulting in sovereign credit downgrades.
Fears of more strike action in the mines have now helped drive the rand to four-year lows in the last month.
Addressing thousands of striking platinum miners last month after his election, AMCU’s new president Joseph Mathunjwa told them proudly that he and his comrades ‘do not sit in boardrooms’.
Now Mathunjwa and his union are to have the full attention of the directors who sit on them – the Lonmin board.
‘It is time now to realise the plight of the working class,’ he said last week at a meeting with foreign investors organised by Standard Bank. ‘You see all these heaps of dumps and the minerals are gone, but the lives of those people who extracted those minerals – they haven’t benefited.
‘You want a huge income and a dividend but I think it is time now to relax a little bit.’
Mathunjwa’s meeting with investors – Standard Bank has not said who attended – reflected corporate necessity to get to know the man who, in 18 months, has gone from an unknown to one of the most powerful figures in Africa’s biggest economy.
The 48-year-old son of a Salvation Army preacher has won tens of thousands of followers portraying himself as a Christian soldier fighting for South Africa’s downtrodden miners.
‘I was chosen by the plight and the suffering of the working class in South Africa,’ he told workers last month from Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine, site of the demonstration last August where police shot dead 34 striking miners.
AMCU’s emergence as the main labour organisor in South Africa’s platinum belt – home to 80 per cent of the world’s known reserves of the metal – is one of many challenges to President Jacob Zuma’s ruling ANC.
This independent movement of the working class has put a question mark over the future of the ANC, which has been running South African capitalism with the support of its youth league, and alliance partner COSATU.
This arrangement is now in complete disarray.
The ANC Youth League caretaker task team announced on Monday it was disbanding four of the league’s provinces – Limpopo, Free State, North West and the Northern Cape.
National task team co-ordinator Mzwandile Masina said the league was at its weakest since its national executive committee was disbanded in March – a move seen by many as a purge of the leadership loyal to the league’s expelled former president, Julius Malema.
‘A culture of gate-keeping, divisions, patronage, membership manipulation and institutionalised factionalism has deeply entrenched itself,’ Masina said.
The league’s KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape and Mpumalanga provinces are already being run by task teams.
Masina said assessments of Gauteng and the Eastern Cape had not been completed.
The ANC has always relied in elections on the energy of the league, some of whose members were unemployed and therefore free to campaign to rally voters on its behalf.
With COSATU also divided over reported attempts to oust general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, who is seen to be too vocal in his criticism of President Jacob Zuma’s government, the ANC is worried about its election strategy.
He said the league was divided on the work of the task team, with some feeling it was ‘about time’ as the previous leadership had itself frequently resorted to disbanding structures at any hint of resistance.
However, many were still shocked by the decision to disband the national executive committee.
In this group, even those not aligned to Malema would see the move as confirmation of their suspicions the ANC is converting the league into a toothless ‘youth desk’.
He said the symptoms described by Masina were part of a ‘genetic disease’ of the mother body which had begun to ‘percolate and spread’ to the affiliates.
Concerns about factionalism, patronage and manipulation of membership had featured consistently over the years in political reports and reports by secretary-generals at ANC conferences at all levels.
Now is the time to build the Fourth International in South Africa.
