Jan de Lange

Don’t be surprised if the once mighty National Union of Mineworkers collapses completely within the next six months as it battles AMCU.

The backdrop to this year’s round of wage negotiations in the gold sector demonstrate just why it’ll be so difficult to arrive at a quick and painless solution.

The easy mines, where you trip over a diamond-bearing outcrop, have long been found in SA but that doesn’t mean new mines in the country are an impossibility.

The five-and-a-half-month strike in South Africa’s platinum sector could have been ended months earlier, said Jan de Lange writing in Rapport.

Platinum companies and the Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union hope to break the 19-week strike with a 16% basic pay increase, sources say.

The strike will normalise the platinum market for at least five years, says Impala Platinum marketing head Derek Engelbrecht.

THE strike at the platinum mines, now in its thirteenth week, will cause the price of the metal to start recovering soon.

BHP Billiton has resumed talks with Eskom over power to its aluminium smelters amid talk the Australian firm is mulling a $20bn demerger of its SA assets.

Chris Griffith is clearly under pressure from the South African government to help diminish AMCU whilst his own company has little interest in subsidising the mines of Rustenburg.

Glencore Xstrata is investing in African thermal coal assets whilst its peer group – BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto – seek an exit from the continent.

Renegade members of AMCU attempted to engineer a mutiny, a story that provides some insight into the treacherous world of organised labour.

SA’s platinum sector will be back to strikes as AMCU makes its move in this most decisive of times for the union. But who can win this high-stakes ‘game’ of poker’?

AMCU’s proposed strike later this week could have broader consequences for the gold sector that first imagined as it claims growing membership in the industry.

The rivalry between AMCU and the NUM is worsening in such a way that not even government leaders, warning of lasting economic damage, can talk them round to reason.

There’s trouble on the horizon as Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union (AMCU) members give leader Joseph Mathunjwa a mandate to call a strike.

The gold strike underway is perhaps the most critical in decades as the NUM and AMCU fight each other for long-term dominance.

The National Union of Mineworkers would prefer not to strike, despite issuing an ultimatum, as calling on members will show it is now a weak organisation.

The Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union has upped the ante with the Chamber of Mines saying it is opposed to central bargaining in the gold sector.

The Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union has to adapt to its role in one of the most cynical clubs in South Africa’s mining sector” collective bargaining.

Labour minister Mildred Oliphant recommended peace-keeping forces occupy mines as the ANC sees labour crisis as a political threat requiring paramilitary intervention.