Ramaphosa hints at labour law reforms

By Wendell Roelf

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) – South Africa should adjust labour laws so union members have to vote before striking, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday, suggesting the government may push ahead with reforms to curb damaging industrial action.

A strike this year in the platinum sector, the longest and costliest in South Africa's history, dragged the continent's most advanced economy into contraction and led Standard & Poor's to downgrade its sovereign credit rating.

The country's biggest union, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), stopped work on July 2 demanding higher wages, halting output at several car factories.

The present system allows unions to declare a wage dispute with employers as soon as wage talks stall, and then call a strike without a ballot, giving employers just 48 hours' notice.

Companies and politicians often argue that workers want to return to work but are intimidated into extending strikes by powerful union leaders.

"I would take a strike ballot as a normal type of process in the governance of strikes… I am hugely in support of that," said Ramaphosa, a trade unionist-turned-billionaire seen as the most likely successor to President Jacob Zuma.

"In view of the length of strikes that we've seen … that is a matter that should be debated," he told reporters in Cape Town, although added that any reforms should be handled "sensitively".

South African business leaders have long argued for the need to rein in the power of unions, saying it is undermining the economy.

"The central problem is not just the length of strikes. It is that the union leaders have too much power and no incentive to settle strikes," the Financial Mail, a leading business weekly, said in an editorial on Thursday.

"They should be bound to hold secret strike ballots. They should be forced to ensure that strikes are not supported by anarchic violence and intimidation," it added.

Last year, in the run-up to 2014 elections, the ruling African National Congress stalled on promises to include strike ballots and picketing rules in amended labour laws currently before parliament.

Analysts said the ANC held back on reforms due to pressure from its labour federation partner, Cosatu, with whom it forms a three-party governing alliance together with the South African Communist Party.

Any changes are unlikely to be implemented quickly as the government, business and unions wrangle over terms.

"Unionists will tell you that it should in no way begin to dilute or minimise the rights that we have enshrined in the constitution – the right to strike," Ramaphosa said.