WORKERS at South African Airways (SAA) are threatening to go on strike if their salary increase demands are not met.
The workers are calling for a 9% salary hike, but this was dismissed by SAA which initially offered a 3% increase.
However, following a meeting at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) the airline indicated it would move its offer up to 5.7%.
The majority of SAA’s cabin crew and ground staff are represented by the United Association of South Africa (UASA) and the South African Transport and Allied Worker’s Union (SATAWU).
‘Parties have decided that they will take it back to their members for a mandate.
‘Within 14 days, we will come back with that mandate and see if we could reach an agreement.
‘If there’s no agreement, obviously a strike is looming to go ahead.
‘The problem is that there are still outstanding issues from last year which are not fulfilled, obviously those are on the card as well,’ says UASA’s Willie van Eeden.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s platinum industry is at risk of losing 145,500 jobs by 2015, an analyst from Nomura claimed last Tuesday.
Assuming a breakeven platinum price of $1,500/oz for 2014 and 2015, Peter Attard-Montalto said in a report that about 24,000 jobs would be at risk next year, growing to 121,500 in 2015.
He stated that the number of job losses was linked to about 64-million ounces of production in 2014, or 14% of South Africa’s total supply, and about 277-million ounces, or 59% of the country’s output, the following year.
‘We can therefore see that the necessity and effects of restructuring will spread widely beyond Amplats (Anglo American Platinum),’ Attard-Montalto said in a statement, adding that the political clampdown on Amplats that banned restructuring job losses was only postponing the inevitable.
‘Put simply, we do not believe that platinum mines will produce at a loss for more than two years . . . the jobs at risk could be shed after the election, when the mines will be under greater pain and the government will not be in the same place in the electoral cycle,’ he argued.
Amplats initially announced 14,000 job losses as part of a restructuring plan, which includes consolidating its Rustenburg operations into three mines and divesting of its loss-making Union mine, but later reduced the proposed job cuts to 6,000 after the government threatened to revoke some of its licences.
Further, Nomura warned that other contributing factors that could amplify job losses in the domestic mining industry included the shift in support from the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) to the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, with the deregistration of the NUM at Lonmin’s Marikana operation, outside Rustenburg, still to take place.
Nomura said a similar move would need to take place throughout the sector.
‘We still find it difficult to see how the government has scope within current law to resist deregistration, but equally we see no way that the government will simply accept this consequence.
‘As such we believe that current expectations about shifting labour regulations to shore up the position of NUM, especially through representation at collective bargaining and the representation limits associated with that, could well be altered,’ Attard-Montalto pointed out.
According to the latest data from Statistics South Africa, the country’s mining industry shed 1,000 jobs in the first quarter of 2013, bringing the job losses in the sector to 20,000 for the past nine months.
Nomura stated that mining companies were likely to stall jobs losses before next year’s general election, should the South African government be ready to push the ‘big red button’ on seizing mining rights for restructured companies.
‘We think the government is unlikely to proceed until after such jobs losses have been announced and there was a major public and political (internal ANC) outcry,’ it said.
Commenting on the draft pact resulting from Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe’s engagement with mining companies and labour last Friday, Attard-Montalto said it was unclear how it would assist to bring stability to the industry.
‘There is no commitment to avoiding strike action and no more fundamental reassessment of the sector to make structural changes, nor anything on majoritarian recognition, simply a call for engagement and nonviolence.’
He said that the latest strike at Amplats’ Thembelani mine, in Rustenburg, confirmed that such pacts had little worth and that real action and leadership would be required.
Attard-Montalto noted that South Africa required a concrete plan from The Presidency on the mining sector and platinum, in particular.
‘The migrant labour system and providing alternative employment in agriculture, in particular, should be the focus which is not there at the moment.’
• Mineworkers who were held underground at Anglo American Platinum’s (Amplats) Thembelani mine in Rustenburg have been released, the company said on Saturday.
‘All is normal. Our employees resurfaced early evening last night and received medical attention to ensure all were in good health,’ said Amplats spokeswoman Mpumi Sithole.
According to the company about 2,400 mineworkers were being prevented from exiting the shaft on Friday.
‘We confirm that this is as a result of the suspension of four shop stewards for inappropriate behaviour which is against our behavioural procedure,’ Sithole said at the time.
Earlier, the workers were staging a sit-in strike over the suspension of four union leaders.
‘They don’t want to come out from underground because they want their leadership’s suspension lifted,’ Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) official George Tyobeka said.
The four Amcu leaders suspended were reportedly accused of submitting fraudulent membership applications in an attempt to inflate union membership numbers.
Amcu and its rival union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), have been struggling for dominance at the mines, which has resulted in violent strikes and assassinations.
Last year, the police shot dead 34 miners at Lonmin’s neighbouring mine in Marikana.
Eight NUM members were recently suspended at Lonmin for alleged union membership fraud.
The Amplats tension happened as Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe was meeting union and mining companies last Friday to find a solution to the instability which has troubled the sector in the past months.
• Trade unions representing thousands of local government employees have not ruled out a strike after a deadlock in negotiations with the South African Local Government Association (SALGA).
The Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (IMATU) and the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) walked out of the negotiations of the Main Collective Agreement.
The unions and SALGA have been negotiating a new agreement since last year.
Salga said following a good start of the negotiations last Tuesday that they were surprised that the unions decided to abandon the negotiations ‘without justifiable reasons’.
But Walter Theledi, general secretary of Samwu rubbished Salga’s statement calling it a ‘blatant lie’.
‘We declared a dispute and it is within our rights. Salga wants to take some of the rights of the workers away. It wants to reverse the victories that were made during apartheid.’
Craig Adams, IMATU deputy general secretary, said that while the current provisions under the Main collective Agreement, signed in 2007, will remain in force until replaced by a new one, they started negotiations last year in the hope that the new agreement would be concluded before this deadline.
