Johannesburg - A new metalworkers’ union that hopes to compete with the country’s largest union, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), has been registered by the Labour Department.
The founders of the Liberated Metalworkers of SA (Limusa) said on Monday they planned to send a letter to Cosatu by next week to apply to be an affiliate to replace Numsa, which was expelled last month.
The union is being led by former Numsa leaders, including former president Cedric Gina, who is considering serving on its secretariat, and Sifiso Maphumulo, a former shop steward at Toyota in Durban, who is the interim president.
Gina told The Star that the union’s membership numbers were not known, but they would do the tally soon.
“Give me a few weeks, but I know our numbers will be in the thousands… We are doing very well at Toyota in Durban. By December 15 we will have 4 000 members,” he said.
Limusa hopes to attract many of Numsa’s 350 000 members who it believes are unhappy with the latter’s political direction.
Nearly a year ago, Numsa resolved at a special congress to form a United Front to co-ordinate struggles in the workplace and in communities.
The meeting also gave the go-ahead to explore establishing a movement for socialism to contest future elections as a workers’ party, and resolved that if Cosatu was incapable of remaining united around a militant programme of action, it should embark on the process of forming a new federation.
Numsa has since been expelled from Cosatu, with its most serious charge being poaching members from other unions as part of its decision to extend its scope.
It is planning to challenge the expulsion in court soon.
Cosatu is unlikely to make any decisions on Limusa while a political process, which was announced late last month, is under way to unite the federation, which is facing implosion due to many reasons.
It is also too early to tell what kind of success Limusa will have, and so far Numsa has maintained the start-up is not a threat.
The union was originally going to be called the Metal and Allied Workers Union of South Africa, but Gina said another union with the same name was registered with the Labour Department.
“Instead of us trying to find out who this union is and who its leaders are, we decided to change to the Liberated Metalworkers of South Africa,” he said.
A letter from the department, seen by The Star, says a registration notice will be published in the Government Gazette on December 12.
Group Labour Editor