Just as South Africa is starting to recover from the longest strike on record in almost 100 years, the workers at NUMSA, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, are gearing up for their own strike in sectors ranging from communications to engineering. Almost a quarter of a million South Africans may go on strike if NUMSA proceeds with its demand for a blanket 12% wage hike for members (management is offering 8%, and inflation is currently 6.6%). The situation is looking increasingly disastrous for South Africa. Strikes are, of course, a natural part of capitalism in modern economies, but crippling strikes like the platinum strike are far beyond the pale. The platinum strike has profoundly damaged the industry, and job cuts and reduced exports are likely to be the result. If NUMSA proceeds with its strike, it will be increasingly clear that workers and management in South Africa are unable to compromise, and employment will suffer as disinvestment bites. It’s a grim picture. – FDÂ
ALEC HOGG: The South African platinum strike has finally come to an end. Meanwhile, the National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA) has rejected Eskom’s five-point-six percent wage increase. It demands a 12 percent increase. Michael Bagraim from Bagraim Attorneys is in our Cape Town studio. Michael, we’ll get onto those issues in just a moment. Maybe, by way of a little bit of an update, in April we had a pretty feisty Michael Bagraim in the studio, telling us about the concerns you had with the Commission for Employment Equity Report. You made some good points there. Were any of them taken up or do you have an update on what’s happened there?
MICHAEL BAGRAIM: Yes, the Equity Reports – and it was mostly the regulations we were fighting about, if you remember correctly… The Minister has actually changed those regulations to indicate that it would be provincial and national figures as its gone back to where it was. I think it was good that the Minister took up those points. I’m not sure if she was watching CNBC Africa at the time – I think she was – and it’s now been taken back. None of it has come in fact, to finality at the moment, but we’re actually very pleased that when you look at the regulations itself, you would take into account the actual available people who can do the job, and you would take into account the demographics of the province or the town, which the people are in.
You will recall that the Minister wanted national demographics to rule everything, which would then mean that Indian people in Durban would have to look for jobs in Johannesburg and Coloured people in Cape Town would have to go through to Durban to find jobs, which is [unclear 1:54] nonsense all over again.
ALEC HOGG: Well, that’s good news, so sanity has prevailed on that one. One wonders however, if sanity is going to prevail on the labour front because we’ve had a five-month strike by AMCU. According to Anglo, which issued an official number yesterday on the Stock Exchange News Service, there’s going to be an average of 8.4 increase in the pay (that will be paid to the workers). Now, that seems pretty minimal for a five-month long strike particularly as the Union is claiming that it had a victory.
MICHAEL BAGRAIM: Unfortunately, yes. No one had victories here. The Union has to in fact, shout and AMCU have been shouting from the rooftops that they have a victory. That’s sheer nonsense and I think the whole world can see that, including our government. The real problem is that everyone was a loser here and this is not the end of the road. I for one, have been applauding the fact that people have come back to work first and foremost, because people are starving. It’s destroyed people, destroyed communities, and destroyed families. It’s just unbelievable – what has actually taken place. What is good however, is that yes, it has concentrated the mines somewhat on the living conditions of the labourers. Obviously, the mine bosses need to look at this very carefully, and look at the living conditions – the homes and the travelling etcetera – of the people who are working on the mines, because that needs to be sorted out.
It was sorted out in the motor industry almost 20 years ago, so one could expect the mines to have done the same, especially when things were good. We have a real problem now going forward, because we’ve heard from AMCU that they believe the mine management are not going to retrench during the currency of this agreement, which is a three-year agreement. We then heard this morning from mine management, saying ‘no’. They have to go forward and look at a possible dismissal for operational requirements – that is retrenchment in no other terms. We’re going to see mass action again on those same mines on a different issue; not wages this time, but in fact, on the retrenchments. I suspect we’re going to go straight back into that scenario where we have mass strikes. We’re now facing a massive strike in the country.
Two hundred thousand metalworkers are threatening to go on strike on the 1st of July – that’s this year on the 1st of July. It’s almost like a punch-drunk man in the ring. As you get up from the first punch of this massive strike (the worst strike we’ve ever had since 1922), we’re standing up. We’re swaying a bit, we’re trying to get ourselves together, we’re going to get another punch (that’s the country getting another punch) from this NUMSA-threatened strike in the metal industry, and they say it’s something like two-hundred-thousand people. I don’t know where we’re going. I know that right now we are in the midst of the strike season. I know they’re talking about Metro strikes. There are lots of little strikes all around the country. The only people gaining from this are the labour lawyers, which is madness, and I do think we need our government to say ‘it can’t be business as usual’.
It certainly can’t be a situation where we’re all dragging our feet and looking at some amendments to the labour law to make it harsh. That’s just going to create more problems. Someone needs to sit back and have a look at it laterally and I’m hoping that parliament does have a proper, decent debate on this. You can’t have a Minister of Minerals to say ‘listen, I couldn’t settle this. I’m going to go home and have a quiet beer’. That’s just not acceptable in anyone’s language.
ALEC HOGG: It is a situation I guess, where some of us are hoping it’s darkest before the dawn but if you are of the opinion that not a whole lot’s been learned from this, and that the NUMSA strike is going to progress… Now we have the Eskom Employees saying they don’t like the five-point-four percent that Eskom is offering. Have we learned anything?
MICHAEL BAGRAIM: That’s what I’m afraid to say – that we haven’t. I don’t think we, – and when I say ‘we’ I’m really pointing fingers at our government. I’m pointing fingers at the ruling party and saying ‘please guys, have a look at this. Have a look at it with an urgent eye. We have all sorts of problems in this country and we don’t have to have self-inflicted problems when we could actually sit down and argue our way through it. South Africans are renowned throughout the world to have negotiated their way out of a real, terrible impasse and now somehow, we can’t save ourselves from ourselves and I’m not sure what the issue really is. What’s everyone scared about? I know that COSATU does wag the ANC. It’s like a tail wagging the dog, but I think the government needs to step back and say ‘listen, we have to think of the country first. We have to think of South Africa first.
We’re not facing an election right now. Let’s not worry about whom people are going to align with or whom they’re going to vote for’. The Tripartite Alliance is dysfunctional, to say the least. Maybe the government must stand on its own feet and start speaking on behalf of the people and on behalf of the workers. The real people that are suffering are the workers – firstly – and secondly, no one’s creating jobs. Because of this issue, who’s going to go out there and buy a second-hand mind that is going to face some retrenchments and mass strikes in the future?
ALEC HOGG: Michael, the problem is jobs are being created by South African businesses, but not in South Africa. We are seeing continued investment by the companies outside of the borders of this country. Are the labour laws that much of a disincentive to invest here?
MICHAEL BAGRAIM: They are, yes. As a labour lawyer, I can tell you they are. I deal with this and I have for the last 35 years. Many businesses and especially small business, which is the engine room for job creation…many of these businesses tell me that the perception out there is that it’s easier to get a divorce than to fire an Employee. Many people are telling me there are two words that made America rich – ‘you’re fired’. That’s what made America rich. If that’s the perception, you would expect the small business owner to say ‘I’ll take my capital and I’ll invest in a business in Mozambique, Botswana, or Angola – wherever. The returns are greater. The labour laws aren’t as harsh. The investment opportunities are great.’ All that is terrible because I’m a South African. I’m a South African first and I would like people to invest here. I want my children to get jobs. We all want this.
We don’t want to see our country collapsing around us. Those labour laws have an enormous operative perception on a small business and even big businesses today. In fact, yes, jobs are being created but it looks like our government is creating jobs, which is not tax efficient at all because that is just money coming out of the fiscus into someone else’s pocket. What we really need is for the businesspeople to have some faith in the country, to have faith that the correct decisions will be made, and that at the end of the day we’re not going to face these massive strikes that just cripple the country. I think this big one coming up with NUMSA and the MEIBC (Metal Engineering Industry Bargaining Council) will be devastating. As we lurch out of the mining strike, we go into that one. We’ll have the Eskom one.
Eskom has bigger problems because now, as the mines started up again, they’re going to have to draw electricity. Both you and I won’t be able to switch on our lights.
ALEC HOGG: Don’t say that, Michael.
