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3 December, 2007
South Africa’s Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration (CCMA) granted the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) certification to go on a 24-hour strike. The strike occurs on 4 December. The CCMA simultaneously worked out agreement between the powerful 300,000-member South African trade union and the Chamber of Mines over a safety protocol.
Tomorrow’s walkout marks the first time in 20 years that a general strike has occurred across the gold, diamond, platinum, and coal mining sectors in South Africa. Some 60 companies will be affected.
The strike certification comes with a successful protocol pact between the NUM and the Chamber of Mines, one that includes the right to a national mine-safety strike on 4 December. The agreement cites “involvement of all role players” to improve mine health and safety, including least senior employees in mining enterprises.
It also creates a high-level, senior task force between the NUM, the mining houses, and the Department of Minerals and Energy that will engage and take actions early in 2008. The companies, through the Chamber, agreed to cooperate with all union structures to improve workplace conditions, and will better utilise NUM’s health and safety representatives. The two sides agreed to expeditiously review and analyze existing recommendations regarding health and safety.
NUM and the Chamber also agreed to hold a full dialogue on the outcome of a presidential audit on mine health and safety. That audit will start this month in over 700 South African mines, and is a direct result of 3,200 miners being trapped at Harmony Gold’s Elandsrand mine in October.
In the meantime, the death rate in and around South African mines keeps climbing.
Goldfields recorded two deaths within a day of each other on 23-24 November at separate worksites, and the same happened at two South African mines of Australian-based Aquarium Platinum – on 15 November and 24 November. Also, a NUM member at Impala Platinum’s Marula mine in Limpopo province was killed on 22 November. All of these recent deaths were due to rock slides, except one of at Goldfields, where a worker was struck and killed by a train at Driefontein.