Mineworkers want a breather for talks
Some workers say it was not the right time to strike
A COMMITTEE representing platinum workers in the Rustenburg area wants the current strike, now in its sixth week, to be suspended to give workers a chance to plan a new negotiating strategy.
Gadafi Mdoda, a former highprofile member of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union ( Amcu) and spokesman of the committee, said they had asked for meetings with management at Impala, where “most employees” supported the committee, and at Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), where it had “massive” support.
“We’re still saying the demand [of a basic wage of R12 500 a month] is appropriate, but it was not the right time to go on strike. We shouldn’t have been out there while the union is in many pieces. We are not breaking the strike,” Mdoda said on Friday.
“Our view as the workers’ committee is to get the mandate from workers, and let’s suspend the strike so we can plan properly.”
The workers’ committee played a key role in negotiations during 2012, when workers abandoned the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in large numbers. It then urged workers to join Amcu. On Friday, Mdoda denied that the committee was involved in setting up another breakaway union, the Workers’ Association Union (WAU), which was launched in Rustenburg at the weekend.
“For us, it is a little too early to join a new union on our own. We need to go into whichever union with the masses behind us,” Mdoda said.
He was one of a number of senior Amcu members expelled from the union in recent months after expressing unhappiness with the way in which the union was run. Amcu president Joseph Matunjwa accused Mdoda of being a “traitor” who received government money to create factions in Amcu.
Liv Shange, spokesman of the Workers’ and Socialist Party (Wasp), which has been highly active in the Rustenburg area before and after 2012’s Marikana massacre, urged workers not to join the Workers’ Association Union, but to claim worker control over Amcu and address issues, such as its lack of structures, through independent workers’ committees.
Breaking away from Amcu would be premature, Shange said, because most workers were still firmly committed to it.
“Doing so on a very rightwing, backward-looking programme was wrong.
“For example, the Workers’ and Socialist Party is totally against the anti-struggle, antistrike talk we have heard from the Workers’ Association Union about workers maintaining ‘peace’ with the bosses ‘for the good of the country’s economy’.
“One of our concerns about WAU is that [the possibility] cannot be excluded that this is an attempt by government and employer forces to divide the mineworkers, that the initiative might be funded and pushed ahead in other ways by such agents,” Shange said.
Talks between the platinum miners and Amcu will continue tomorrow. The mining companies had not yet been approached by the Workers’ Association Union, it said.