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5 November, 2007
A general strike across South Africa’s mining industry is still very likely to occur in November, according to the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The 300,000-member union issued a rejection of a mediated offer put forward by the Chamber of Mines to conduct only shift strikes.
The NUM formally applied to South Africa’s Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) for the right to strike in mid-October. They await a certificate granting them 48-hour strike notice. The strike is to call attention to serious safety deficiencies brought on by high production.
The NUM is engaged at the CCMA with the Chamber of Mines at the bargaining table, and they are in full mobilisation with 250,000 miners to bring a 24-hour general strike against all mining houses in South Africa. The last general strike in mining occurred 20 years ago.
The NUM is now conducting mass meetings of miners, and will ratchet that up with national and region actions, before launching the general strike. The union’s National Executive Committee met late last week in special session to discussion the safety issue. “Our members would like to go on strike to protest safety today,” read a NUM statement, “but the legal system is a disappointment to them since it stipulates processes and processes.”
The NUM warned job action will occur. “A showdown looms over safety,” the NUM said. We are “determined to have a solution to the escalating fatalities” in the mining sector.
Meanwhile, the fatalities in South Africa’s mines keep occurring. On 31 October, two miners died when explosives ignited inside Goldfield’s Kloof Mine near Westenaria. The NUM blamed end of month spikes in production to achieve bonus levels as the cause. This is the same mine in which three miners died on 10 October when a rope hoisting a skip loaded with rocks snapped, and crashed down a shaft.
In another mine blast, this time at a platinum operation, two miners were killed on 23 October. The company involved was Marula Platinum and the mine is located in Burgersfort, Limpopo.
On October 17, South Africa’s Inspector of Mines, Thabo Gazi, presented his annual report to the Parliament’s Committee on Minerals and Energy. The report included 2006 deaths compared to those in 2005. Deaths in the coal and gold sectors rose in 2006 by 16% and 10%, respectively, in those two sectors, while deaths in the platinum industry fell by 15%.
In 2003, the Chamber of Mines made a commitment to achieve a rate of zero workplace deaths by 2013. In June of this year, 2007 at an employers’ summit, the chamber admitted that drastic action was needed now to curb 2007’s death rate.