WEEKLY INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS UPDATE

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1 Human Resources, Recruitment, Assessments, Industrial Relations, Remuneration, Training and Development, Operational Readiness, Project Management, Due Diligence, Payroll, Labour and Community liaison and intelligence WEEKLY INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS UPDATE Week ending: 15 March 2015 WAGE NEGOTIATIONS Liviero Mining Liviero Mining reached a comprehensive 2-year agreement with Amcu on Friday for the contract mining operations it performs in Delmas and Ermelo. The agreement builds on the initial one-year agreement reached with Amcu in Noteworthy is the fact that the agreement was reached after 5 meetings, a much shorter time period than in Both Liviero and the Amcu will be approaching the BCCEI (Bargaining Council for the Civil Engineering Industry) to obtain exemption from the negotiations in the Council. Both Liviero and Amcu are of the opinion that mining operations should not form part of the BCCEI. In addition they are also of the opinion that they should not be paying levies to the Council until such time as clarity is obtained regarding the status of mining in the Council. If the BCCEI s insistence continue that all civil engineering companies must be covered by it irrespective of whether they are involved in mining contracting or not, then a very difficult situation could develop with many opencast mining contracting companies being forced into the BCCEI and the mines themselves bargaining in different forums. Num bargaining conference The Num has held its pre-bargaining conference during the week at its Conference Centre in Midrand.

2 2 Noteworthy is that the Num indicated that it would work together with Amcu in the wage negotiations which will commence soon at the Chamber. A lot of time was spend to discuss service delivery to members particularly since the Num membership at gold mines has declined from a high of about 76% in 2012 to about 57% at present (with Amcu seemingly continuing to grow). The Num is also seeking grewater unity and uniformity in remuneration in the industry which may result in different demands in different parts of the mining industry to align conditions of employment. Noteworthy was some of the speeches made at the conference particularly that of Enoch Godongwana, head of the ANC s economic transformation cluster who came out strongly in support of secret strike ballots. He also suggest questions that unions should ask as part of the minimum wage debate relating on whetger such a minimum wage should be national or sector based. Frans Baleni also referred to Numsa and the Numsa initiative to recruit Num members. Frans indicated that he would be willing to support a return by Numsa to Cosatu if Numsa stop its recruitment initiative to recruit Num members. Medical industry Solidarity reached favourable wage agreements for its members at three medical institutions in Gauteng, namely the Netcare hospital group (7%), Vista Clinic (6.3%) and the Zuid-Afrikaans Hospital (ZAH) (7.5) in February. This seems to confirm the predicted settlement range for 2015 as being between 6 and 8%. Samwu and Salga The SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) is said to be negotiating wage increases without a legitimate mandate from workers, thereby putting its talks with the SA Local Government Association (Salga) in jeopardy. The union is accused of failing to hold a bargaining conference (which it admits) as well as consultation meetings with members, as is the norm before entering into pay talks. In the meantime Salga is concerned that any agreement reached at the Council could be rejected by workers.

3 3 INDUSTRIAL ACTION REAL OR THREATENED Public sector With Cosatu now mainly representative of mostly the public service, the Independent Labour Caucus (ILC) in the public service negotiations has joined Cosatu-affiliated unions in accusing the state of negotiating in bad faith in the ongoing public sector salary negotiations. This follows the state reducing its initial offer of 5,8% to 4,8% in line with the newest CPI forecast. However, the state s offer is in line with bargaining conventions in the negotiations where offers are directly linked to the CPI. Although the unions are threatening declaring disputes, it still is highly unlikely until after all offers have been made (i.e. also regarding other issues). Coega The two-day strike at Coega s Dedisa power plant has been ended with the signing of an agreement. Workers affiliated to the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) downed tools, alleging that the main site contractor, Group Five, was paying workers from other provinces better than those from Mandela Bay. The matter was clarified which led to the ending of the strike. Numsa and Limpopo Toyota Limpopo Toyota, a car dealership In Polokwane, is victim to a strike by more than 100 members of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) with the workers demanding the immediate resignation of the company management, accusing them of corruption and conducting their own business against company policy. They claim that when they confronted management about this, they were told there would be retrenchments. Five shop stewards were suspended, an action which triggered the strike. The Company confirmed that it started with a retrenchment process. COMMUNITY Delmas (Mpumalanga)

4 4 The Delmas situation has calmed but is not yet resolved. High level discussions at provincial government level is in progress. The essential issue is that the community of Delmas do not want incorporation into a bankrupt emhalahleni (80 km away) but rather propose incorporation into Ekhurheleni (30km away). The Minister reported back but did not support incorporation into Gauteng. As such the community action is continuing with further action expected from next Monday onwards. Hotazel (Northern Cape) United Manganese of Kalahari (UMK) was approached by a community grouping trying to arrange a meeting with the mine. It seems that the grouping is from Ward 5 in Kuruman and they are, as is the case with many of these groupings, interested in forcing their way into the mine for commercial gain. Community action in mining areas Due to community groups increasingly trying to gain access to mines to demand jobs (see Hotazel report above), contracts and business opportunities, I had a meeting with Amcu national and Num regional Northern Cape leadership in this regard to elicit their opinion. Both unions are unanimous that the only effective manner in which mines can deal with this issue is to ensure that the Future Forums at mines as well as other structures monitoring implementation of SLP commitments, are operational and that unions in particular are involved and updated on a regular basis. In this way outside groups can be dealt with by both management and unions/employees as not being representative and neither part of the SLP or Future Forum of the mine. The unions emphasized that information sharing regarding projects and skills development as well as job creation is essential to ensure that employees are educated and can escape the false information spread by these groupings LABOUR POLICY Employment equity targets

5 5 Parliament s portfolio committee on labour decided on Wednesday that employers must take both national and regional demographics into consideration when promoting affirmative action and employment equity in the workplace. Politically and employment-wise, this is a vexed question in the Western and Northern Cape, with their large coloured populations, and in KwaZulu-Natal, with a large Indian population. If the national demographic norm were to be applied, many workers belonging to minority groups would stand to lose their jobs. ANC MP and committee chairman Lumka Yengeni asked the parliamentary legal division to provide clarity on whether national demographics or regional demographics should be paramount. Drawing on the recent finding by Judge Hilary Rabkin-Naicker in the labour court case between trade union Solidarity and the Department of Correctional Services regarding the employment and promotion of coloured and white prison warders in the Western Cape, it was found that neither the national nor the regional demographics were absolute arbiters. In employment equity or affirmative action, employers had to strike a balance between the two.