Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana tried to break the impasse in the negations between mining companies and union leaders last weekend.
Mdladlana’s intervention was rebuffed by Gwede Mantashe, the general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).
Mantashe confirmed this week that Mdladlana had phoned him several times at the weekend to urge the union leader to strike a wage deal with the mining companies.
The strike threatened by the NUM would have been the biggest in the mining industry in 16 years.
Mdladlana made the intervention from Chile, where he held bilateral talks with his Chilean counterpart. On Saturday he asked his spokesperson, Snuki Zikalala, to phone Mantashe to check on the progress of the wage talks.
Mantashe said he instructed Zikalala to tell Mdladlana to ”stop acting like a shop steward”.
”I don’t understand why he [Mdladlana] should be so worried about union issues. We don’t want ministers who act like shop stewards in this country. Maybe he just wanted to claim the credit after we managed to find a solution for the workers, so that he could position himself for re-election as Cabinet minister next year,” Mantashe said.
Zikalala said this week: ”He [Mdladlana) was very worried because he doesn’t like it when workers lose jobs. That’s why he felt that the strike shouldn’t happen. You must know that during strikes some employers dismiss workers.”
Zikalala refused to divulge further details, saying the talks were private.
A settlement between the mining houses and the union was reached on Sunday afternoon, after the NUM accepted the Chamber of Mines’s 10% across the-board increase offer. This is half the original 20% demanded by the union but higher than the inflation rate.
Mass action was scheduled to start with the night shift last Sunday. It looked a certainty on Saturday afternoon, when mineworkers’ representatives from various regions rejected the chamber’s offers of 12,5% for employees earning R1 569, 11,3% for employees earning R1 615 and 9,5% for the majority of employees.
Workers will receive a basic increase of 10% this year from July 1. Next year’s raise will match consumer inflation plus one percentage point, with a minimum of 7%.
The mines agreed to complete the regrading of operators by the end of the year, backdated to July 1 this year.