NUMSA’s general secretary Irvin Jim has a weird view of the world. He denies his members are involved in blindly obvious intimidation, violence and downright thuggery. Despite the perpetrators being clothed in NUMSA uniforms. Â Then Jim snarls on television that if employers dare lock out NUMSA members, they should expect a “strong reaction”. His constituency laps up the double talk. The rational see such dramatics as pathetic. Most who are looking for accurate guidance look to trade union Solidarity, which has become the sole voice of logic in SA’s turbulent labour arena. Solidarity general secretary Gideon du Plessis often provides the only sober analysis in a room full of drunks. He repeats the dose in this excellent contribution. Â – AH
By Gideon du Plessis*Â
Two years have gone by since the Marikana incident, and unprecedented labour unrest has followed in its wake. Important developments since then include the Framework Agreement for a Sustainable Mining Industry (which only Amcu failed to sign); the conflict within Cosatu; the 2013 wage negotiations at the Chamber of Mines; the Amcu platinum strike of five months’ duration; and most recently the Numsa strike in the metal and engineering industry.
This instability will have good and bad consequences for the future labour-relations dispensation in South Africa.
The good
Although the labour-relations environment has been experiencing unprecedented tumult since 1994, this instability has also produced some positive developments. Â Important in this connection is the awareness that materialised, both in government circles and at the executive level of the business world, that labour-relations disputes can have a destructive effect on the growth prospects of a company, an industry and the country as a whole.
The complexity of labour relations is also becoming better understood at the highest levels. Labour relations are clearly the front line for the second phase of the “struggle” that is being waged to gain the bruited economic liberation of the working classes.
The ideological framework of socialistic labour unions’ thinking is not to do the best for their members and thereby protect labour, but rather to redistribute. Despite lip service to the lot of workers, attempts at redistribution are often no more than a grudge action against the “owners of capital”. Mining companies, politicians and even executives and government officials have all become directly embroiled in this ideological witches’ cauldron (but this embroilment is not an unmixed blessing).
In light of the intensity of recent strike action a number of statutory amendments are being considered as a means of curbing the destructive effect of strikes and the high levels of intimidation. Especially notable is a compulsory strike ballot, partly removed from the Labour Relations Act after 1996, which will possibly soon be reinstated as part of labour-relations legislation. At the moment especially the more belligerent trade unions resort to an intimidating public show of hands to determine whether members are in favour of a strike or not.
Moreover labour legislation should soon also contain a definition and guideline on occurrences that would render a strike dysfunctional. During the Amcu strike many employers threatened to have the platinum strike declared dysfunctional and have it changed to an unprotected strike. The challenge for employers was that legislation made no provision for such a process, which would have made litigation extremely difficult.
Future legislation should also contain provisions for the deregistration of a violent trade union, especially when it persistently transgresses the letter and spirit of the Labour Relations Act. By the same token the initiating process of a trade union’s recognition at a workplace must also be cleared up. Currently the processes of verifying the representativeness of a trade union, based on membership numbers, is unreliable.
Unfortunately the undermining of the supremacy of the law, which some trade unions are guilty of, cannot be remedied by revised legislation alone. The violence perpetrated against non-strikers and the damage to property are simply criminal. The government and especially the South African Police Service should adopt a zero-tolerance approach in order to curb strike-related violence and intimidation. A more robust process than the protracted practice of the moment is required: every identifiable striker who commits acts of strike violence, intimidation and looting should be dismissible with ease.
It is imperative for moderate and responsible trade unions such as Solidarity that strike-related violence and intimidation be brought under control. The negative images that are broadcast on television almost daily damage the role and credibility of all trade unions. One cannot help noticing, for example, how South Africans are noisily letting off steam on social media about trade unions’ destructive effect on South African society and the South African economy. Fortunately, however, there have been incidents in the platinum belt where trade union branches’ strong chairpersons observed the trade-union bigwigs’ abuse of workers and took countermeasures accordingly. Worker committees were established from trade union structures and could offer resistance as a new entity to imprudent trade union conduct.
The possibility of making legislative provision for compulsory arbitration process once a strike has extended to certain duration may also have a remedial effect on the problem and has actually been vouchsafed the support of a number of role players. The alternative is another secret ballot after a period of striking.
Among the first legislative amendments could be the scrapping of the undemocratic majority principle of trade-union recognition. This vaunted majority principle has been identified by many specialists and even government leaders as one of the underlying reasons for trade union tension. The principle is a legislative provision that endows larger trade unions with artificial advantages above those of smaller trade unions and therefore make it difficult for the latter to gain recognition in the workplace. These difficulties act as a spur to smaller trade unions to resort to drastic measures to gain such recognition. Removal of the majority principle will therefore be good news for smaller trade unions, whose constitutional right to freedom of association is being undermined at present.
A last positive outcome of the unstable labour-relations sphere is the collapse of especially Cosatu trade unions’ insistence on the “one industry, one trade union” principle. Like Amcu, Numsa especially has begun to canvass membership across industries, thereby effectively neutralising the dominance of one trade union in a particular industry. However, this development also has negative consequences, to be addressed below.
The bad
The necessity of negotiating in good faith is emphasised in the labour legislation of certain countries. Although it is not being officially discussed in South Africa the institutionalising of this principle has become imperative. Too many settlements are currently only reached after strike action.
During the 2013 negotiations under the auspices of the Chamber of Mines, as well as the platinum and metal and engineering negotiations, employers could already discern a determination to strike at the outset of negotiations. Consequently employers negotiated conservatively and gave away little at first so as to leave room for negotiations once the strike started in earnest. Thus real negotiations only began when the strike had set in and employers and employees were already in a lose-lose situation.
It seems as if strikes and the build-up of “strike credentials” have become an overriding priority for the leaders of certain trade unions. Under the auspices of labour matters strikes become a convenient platform from which trade-union leaders can amplify their public image and make populist pronouncements to a small audience, yet gain countrywide coverage.
In one of the worst forms of bad-faith negotiations to date, Amcu during the platinum strike – and more recently Numsa during the metal and engineering strike – resiled unilaterally from negotiated concessions. Whether this breach of trust was attributable to a lack of respect for negotiation protocol, or whether it was a sign of internal strife, negotiations are subjected to a severe setback when parties set positive negotiations at naught by retreating to unrealistic positions.
Given the recalcitrant turn taken by negotiations, other players have entered the fray at the negotiating table. The governing party is beginning to realise that new trade unions such as Amcu, and bolshie trade unions such as Numsa, are threatening the governing party’s hold on the so-called working classes. This, and not only the economic instability brought in the wake of the strikes, has motivated senior politicians and ministers to participate in labour disputes. Ministerial mediation has in fact become an extension of the dispute resolution process at the point where normal labour-dispute procedures come to an end. The dubious result is that the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) and negotiating-council facilitators are outranked by ministerial facilitators. Similar changes have eventuated on the employers’ side. Senior human-resource and financial managers, who would be seasoned negotiators in the normal course, are now replaced by chief executive officers who must negotiate with ministers and trade-union leaders. The result is a high-level mess.
Whereas a commercial transaction requires the business acumen of a chief executive officer, a salary negotiation is a matter of stage acting, emotion, caucusing, personal attacks, false signals, and especially a struggle to dominate public opinion. Salary negotiations are a specialised field that is no place for executive officers. For strategic reasons an employer’s negotiating team should always leave the backdoor open by being able to say that to entertain any concession favourably he/she must first receive the go-ahead from his executive head.
Another negative aspect of contemporary labour relations is the major disunity both among trade unions themselves, and among employers as well. For trade unions the struggle is not only to recruit new members, but often also to gain the upper hand as the dominant trade union in a particular industry. The unfortunate aftermath of especially Cosatu’s “one industry, one trade union” approach is that, now that trade unions are beginning to canvass members from each other’s erstwhile sacrosanct territory in any case, considerable tension is being aroused.
Personal gain also plays a role. Employers, who did not realise the destabilising effect of a single trade union in the workplace, rather than several smaller ones, were preparing a whip to tan their own hides by affording preferential treatment to majority trade unions. Many employers audaciously sought to buy trade union loyalty by spoiling the representatives of winner-takes-all trade unions with all kinds of material deal-sweeteners. This created all the wrong incentives.
On the other side of the fence the platinum and metal and engineering strikes have shown that there is more division in the ranks of employers now than ever before. Even the once proverbially stable Chamber of Mines negotiations began to display cracks last year when some coal-mining employers made independent salary offerings.
At the present juncture it is only the gold-sector employers whose solidarity still command the respect of trade unions. The large mining houses are not readily played off against each other and are still displaying some rare strands of Margaret Thatcher genes. It will be interesting to see how the gold sector fares next year when a more experienced Amcu challenges its arch-enemy, Num, on that terrain.
The road ahead
Strong leadership emanating from all stakeholder corners is required to resolve negative issues. This is true for the matters addressed above as well as factors causing irritation in the background.
For example, the inefficient migrant labour system and concomitant ethnic tension contribute to instability and conflict mainly in the mining sector. Participation by all interested parties in governmental processes aimed at alleviating the migrant labour problem is indispensable. Amcu, which has been boycotting the conversation about this matter to date, must join the mainstream discussion as a matter of urgency.
Amcu’s lead in this matter will be decisive. If Amcu experiences no negative backlash from the platinum strike – which resulted in the greatest single loss of employee income in the history of the mining sector – then Amcu will henceforth be the pacesetting trade union. On the other hand, if Amcu does experience an exodus of members, then Numsa should be the last refuge of the cast adrift miners. After all, Numsa has the same populist type of leadership as Amcu but its organisation is much better.
Some of the most critical leadership questions are in the realm of politics, however. As parliamentary debate becomes shallower and tolerance for mediocrity and high levels of corruption increases it becomes clear that populist and ideologically driven trade union leaders are exploiting the political leadership vacuum. Not to mention the evil matrix created by socialistically orientated politicians when they keep on trying to make a whipping boy of the so-called white establishment and owners of capital.
Every now and then someone mentions the possibility of a labour-relations Codesa. For such a proposition to have any prospect of success it would have to be preceded by a refurbishment of the moral and ethical compass of the political stage at large. If not, only the symptoms of the new destructive labour-relations dispensation, rather than its original political cause, will be addressed.
* Gideon du Plessis is the General Secretary of the trade union Solidarity.
