[miningmx.com] — A NEWS conference by the Associated Mining &
Construction Workers Union (Amcu) can be a hostile and time-consuming affair.
Joseph Mathunjwa, AMCU’s president, is often late as he and the trade union’s other
officials have to make their way from Witbank and they always misjudge the traffic.
When they finally arrive breathlessly, Mathunjwa reads a statement for about five
minutes and then makes himself available for questions.
Mathunjwa, who has had many years of experience in negotiations, but very little in
media relations, doesn’t have many words but answers fire with fire – typical of tough
negotiators.
Mathunjwa said on Friday that he was committed to a peaceful settlement at Lonmin,
claiming that his willingness to go without personal protection or police
accompaniment and talk to threatening and armed workers shortly before the
massacre on August 16 demonstrated this. He was therefore under no obligation to
sign a peace agreement with Lonmin’s management, he said, adding that striking
workers have given him a mandate to present their wage demand of R12,500 per
month to the company. That is what he was prepared to do.
As for the National Union of Mineworkers, it two days earlier had its own press
conference, where it announced its support for the Lonmin accord. Frans Baleni
repeatedly challenged Amcu to sign the agreement so that the “illegal strike’ could be
ended.
Why is it an “illegal strike’?
One of the largest and most successful protest marches in the turbulent early Nineties
was Cosatu’s march in 1993 to the Codesa negotiations on a new Constitution for
South Africa. Cosatu was determined that the right to strike had to be entrenched in
the new Constitution.
NUM was right in the front of that protest march. The result of that strike and march
is that the right to strike is today one of the most protected provisions in the
Constitution.
Baleni’s references to an “illegal strike’ is therefore very strange. There’s no such
thing as an illegal strike in South Africa, and his trade union was the leading champion
for this. There are unprotected strikes. That’s when prescribed dispute procedures,
including mediation, are not followed. These involve greater risks for the strikers –
they can be dismissed or the employer can take other disciplinary action against
them.
However, it doesn’t change the fact that unprotected strikes are just as important part
of collective bargaining as a protected strike. It’s a legal way of putting pressure on
the employer to negotiate better wages and conditions of service, and that’s exactly
what Lonmin’s workers are busy doing.
This should be kept in mind when one tries to look at the events of the past month
through the eyes of the strikers.
That’s also why Amcu does not want to sign the peace accord – because the peace
accord requires the strike to be ended. If Mathunjwa were to sign the peace accord,
he would be denying the workers’ right to strike and repudiating the mandate that the
strikers have given him. After all, the strikes are the backbone of the wage demand.
Repudiation is exactly what NUM did when it signed the peace accord. The
implications of this are probably an irreparable breach of confidence between NUM
and Lonmin’s striking workforce. That NUM signed the agreement without hesitation
indicates that the breach probably already existed before the signing.
It’s not Mathunjwa’s job to spell this out for the outside world, but the indications are
clear to anyone who is open to the undercurrents in this bloody and dangerous
dispute.
“I carry that mandate, but Lonmin has not yet responded to it at all,’ Mathunjwa said.
The unprotected strike is the backbone of their wage demand.
Why do workers take the risk of an unprotected strike? Because they do not trust the
NUM to present their wage demand to Lonmin’s management. On the same day that
they asked Mathunjwa to do so, they drove NUM president Senzeni Zokwana away
when he tried to address them from a police armoured vehicle.
– Sake24
