JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The platinum industry must first be stabilised before trade union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), will consider participating in centralised collective bargaining processes.

AMCU president Joseph Mathunjwa told a press briefing on Thursday that the union’s decision to reject the Chamber of Mines’ (CoM’s) proposed central bargaining forum was grounded in the belief that the mining industry required additional interventions to deal with existing inequalities and wage gaps.

“As AMCU, we have been mandated by our members in the platinum industry to reject the proposed forum and, as a result, we will, this year, be submitting our demands to individual employers within the next two weeks for negotiations at company level,” he said.

The union had requested its branches to start the process of collecting wage requests from its members across all mines, but would not be drawn on exactly what percentage wage increase it would demand from companies.

“We have not yet finalised our demands, so it would be too early to indicate a figure at this stage,” he commented.

While the union would also conduct a membership audit to determine the participants in this process, as well as to calculate representative thresholds at each mine, Mathunjwa indicated that it enjoyed majority representation at most operations.

“At this stage, we have around 120 000 members and represent over 60% of the workforce at Impala Platinum’s (Implats’) operations, around 74% at Lonmin and about 45% at Anglo American Platinum (Amplats),” he said.

Once the union had completed its audit and, should it elect to engage in any form of collective bargaining, the allocation of seats in such a council would have to reflect the membership of each union in the industry, and would only be done upon the establishment of a mining industry bargaining council instead of the current proposed bargaining forum structure.

This followed a meeting between AMCU, South African platinum mining companies and the CoM last month to negotiate an industry-wide wage deal instead of company-by-company settlements.

Mining Weekly reported, at the time, that the CoM had facilitated the meeting in the hopes of preventing further aggressive labour conflict that had ravaged the local platinum sector in the last year.

AMCU was also in the process of collating demands from its members in the gold mining sector and had requested further information from the CoM regarding current wage structures and conditions of employment for all gold mines bargaining at chamber level.

“Our members have yet to mandate us with regard to participation at a central bargaining forum for gold mines,” Mathunjwa noted, adding that the current gold sector wage agreement would expire in June.

Meanwhile, AMCU was continuing its engagement with Implats and Lonmin around the signing of recognition agreements at their respective operations following a significant change in the union membership profile over the past year, but had referred disputes to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) following the slow pace of discussions.

Mining Weekly reported on Thursday that Lonmin had welcomed the union’s decision to refer negotiations to the CCMA, describing it as “an opportunity to reach agreement” and committing to fully participate in the process.

The platinum miner had a limited organisational rights agreement with AMCU, which was valid until a new recognition agreement was finalised.
In addition, there had been some progress towards recognition by Implats, with Mathunjwa hopeful that a possible agreement could be signed before the CCMA had set down a date for conciliation.

Meanwhile, as the industry waited for word from Amplats this week about the outcome of prolonged consultations around its proposed restructuring plan, AMCU said it had engaged with the company during certain “streams” of the review process, but was not privy to the most recent consultations between the company and government.

Amplats had planned to cut 14 000 jobs and mothball two mines to pull back to profit.

Mathunjwa would not be drawn on the union’s response to a possible outcome that may still see extensive, if reduced, job cuts.

“We are still in the dark as to the outcome of this process as there is due process, and we cannot pre-empt a decision. However, any possible objection we have to the outcome will be dealt with within the confines of the Labour Relations Act. We do not condone violence,” he commented in response to reports that certain Implats employees would launch protest strikes, even if the job cuts fell short of the initial target.