Appealing to JCI’s Mzi Khumalo has not helped the NUM in negotiating retrenchments with the mining house, writes Ferial Haffajee
`WE expected more heart from someone like Mzi; it was a heartless decision,” says the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) deputy general secretary Gwede Mantashe of Mzi Khumalo, JCI’s new chair.
JCI has decided it must retrench 2900 miners and 750 contractors at its Randfontein Estates gold mine. Now the NUM has declared a dispute with the company on retrenchment packages and its new black owners are getting a taste of the less glitzy side of gold.
Randfontein Estates is a stable of four mines dotted around the mining towns of Krugersdorp and Randfontein. They lie in one of the richest gold belts in the country, but profits have tumbled and management decided in February that one- third of the workforce must go.
By this week, many workers had decided to opt for retrenchment packages. Men wrapped in blankets sat pensively inside drafty union offices looking for help to fill in retrenchment application forms.
Among them was Amos Mthethwa, who has been with JCI for 10 years and earns R1 100 a month. “There’s no job security; every year there’s retrenchment,” says Mthethwa, who will return to his KwaZulu-Natal home. “I’m very worried; I’ll decide what to do when I get home.” He will receive a retrenchment package of about R5500, plus pension for the 10 years he’s worked at Randfontein Estates.
Other miners, such as Victor Motsaathape, are holding out for the higher severance packages that the NUM is trying to negotiate.
The NUM has demanded four weeks’ pay for the first year of service, plus two weeks’ pay for every year worked thereafter. JCI is offering 1,8 weeks’ pay for every year of service with a minimum of four weeks’ severance pay.
For many miners it’s not only about money. Motsaathape is qualified for nothing else except mining. If he loses this job, his chances of getting another are slim and he will also lose the comfortable house his family lives in and the free schooling the mine provides.
“They didn’t give us a chance to prepare ourselves,” says Motsaathape. But JCI says there’s no time; this week it accused the union of “delaying tactics”.
“This process cannot be extended indefinitely as the additional cost to the mine, of some R300000 a day, jeopardises the jobs of the remainder of the workforce,” said JCI this week.
The dispute throws up many challenges and some contradictions for black capital, which is investing billions in mining.
The industry is in trouble, with mining barons caught between a low gold price and the threatened sale of gold reserves by the world’s central banks.
The demands on labour are greater than ever, for on mineworkers’ shoulders lies the survival of the industry. Productivity needs to go up, working practices must change to get the gold that lies far deeper in the ground after decades of prospecting and then there’s the unspoken competition from new mines in the rest of Africa, and South America, where reserves are more plentiful and labour much cheaper.
All this portends more difficult times for labour relations.
Many thousands of mineworkers have lost their jobs in the past decade as the mining industry has shrunk from its former glory as the mainstay of the South African economy. Over the years, the NUM has established procedures to negotiate humane retrenchment packages and it charges that JCI tried to side-step these procedures.
So the union turned instead to Khumalo, an old comrade who spent 12 years on Robben Island, but who also now wears the hat of JCI chief.
At a meeting last week at the union’s Johannesburg headquarters, old friendships were renewed as NUM president James Motlatsi and Khumalo decided that no retrenchments would take place until the end of June.
In the way of old friends, the agreement was not signed and sealed, in fact it wasn’t even typed up. This week, Khumalo was back in London negotiating a potential merger with Lonrho and the company changed tack, stating that retrenchments would begin as soon as possible.
“It’s a question of integrity. There was an agreement,” says Mantashe, whose union is now getting tough.
A dispute has been declared with JCI. The Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration will be brought in to find a solution before a legal strike can take place.
“Capital has no colour; we will deal with JCI just like we deal with any other company,” adds Mantashe.
But Mantashe’s tone indicates hurt and surprise, almost as if the union had been banking on easier times from black owners in an industry that has always been hard. Now the mineworkers have learnt otherwise.
“We expect more brutal tactics from those who know us because they know our tactics,” he says.
The NUM hopes that new black owners will follow the advice the union gives to officials who go to work for mining companies.
“Don’t forget your roots,” says NUM shop- steward Thabane Mngomezulu.