Johannesburg - The future of the talks aimed at ending the six-and-a-half-week wage strike in the platinum belt is in jeopardy after a public brawl between the Chamber of Mines and the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) yesterday.
This comes after Elize Strydom, the chamber’s chief negotiator, blamed negotiators at the CCMA for a breakdown in talks between the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) and platinum mining companies.
In an article in the Sunday Times at the weekend, Strydom said the CCMA negotiators had little or no knowledge of mining and no economic acumen and blamed them for the talks being bungled.
The CCMA is the dispute resolution body set up by the Labour Relations Act of 1995. It was fuming yesterday, and issued a statement in which it called on the chamber to either retract Strydom’s comments or face consequences.
The CCMA said that it had written a letter to Bheki Sibiya, the chamber’s chief executive, yesterday, voicing disappointment at Strydom’s comments, in which she “unjustly accuses the CCMA of misconduct and incompetence”.
The letter said Strydom had never raised such concerns and the commission considered it alarming that an organisation such as the chamber expressed its concern in the media without having at any point raised these issues with the CCMA.
The statement warned of damage to the dispute resolution body, which could affect other industrial conflicts far beyond the mining sector.
“The impact of this is difficult to quantify at this stage,” the CCMA said, “but we are concerned that it will impair the trust relations key to mediation, which, taking into account the approaching collective bargaining season, places the historical confidence of social partners in the organisation at risk.”
Sibiya confirmed that the chamber had received the letter and was talking to the CCMA on the matter.
In the article, Strydom said the CCMA negotiators had neither knowledge nor experience of the mining industry.
“You have to talk about a rock drill operator, winding-engine drivers and what they’re paid and you see the non-comprehension in the eyes of the negotiator of the union.
“It’s scary… I’d rather sit opposite someone who gives me a really hard time based on facts, experience, knowledge and logic,” Strydom noted in the article.
Loane Sharp, a labour economist at Adcorp Holdings, said he was not surprised by Strydom’s comments because business had had a major problem with the ineffectiveness of the CCMA for the past 20 years.
“By making thinly veiled threats against the Chamber of Mines the CCMA does not appreciate that it is the laughing stock of South Africa’s labour relations regime,” Sharp said.
“This case should be resolved in the Labour Court once and for all. If the labour laws and regulations don’t change, then the platinum industry will not be the only sector in jeopardy.”
The CCMA has been facilitating talks to end the impasse that resulted in 70 000 Lonmin, Impala Platinum and Anglo American Platinum downing tools on January 23.
Amcu is demanding a R12 500 minimum entry-level wage for underground employees and has been all but immovable in pursuing this goal.
The basic wage is R5 700 in the industry and employers say they cannot afford to pay what Amcu is demanding. They have offered a three-year wage agreement comprising increases of between 9 percent and 7.5 percent a year.
Last week the CCMA announced it was indefinitely suspending talks. - Business Report