Read this article in:
8 October, 2009
A five-week strike at a BHP-owned manganese mine and smelter by members of the Kimberley branch of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in South Africa ended 5 October with a satisfactory one-year contract.
The resolve came after global pressure was applied by ICEM mining affiliates, as well as attention given BHP’s bargaining indifference at the recent statutory meeting of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and at ICEM’s Sub-Sahara Africa Region Meeting in Lagos, Nigeria, on 15 September.
“We were very fortunate to have international pressure and a COSATU focus on this strike,” said NUM Kimberley Regional Coordinator Lucas Phiri. “The arrogance of this company from the mine level to the Johannesburg office was something I have not seen in 12 years inside the NUM.”
The 920 miners and smelting-plant workers at BHP’s Hozatel Manganese operation in the Northern Cape downed tools on 28 August. Their dispute was not just about wages – South African managers, in fact, were cancelling meetings both at the local level and with NUM national officers – but about parity between black and white miners, and for improved conditions for women in this remote mining region of the Northern Cape.
With 90% of the 920 workers black, the NUM discovered that white workers at Hozatel got better medical assistance benefits, and received a transportation allowance of 2,000 rands per month, while blacks received 440 rands. Many miners live in hostels, but others travel from the village of Kuruman to the Hozatel operation.
Due to outside pressure on BHP, local management finally got serious on addressing issues that caused the strike and called for talks on 5 October. Both sides agreed to an 8% pay increase effective 1 September, with a one-off 4,000 rand payment per worker for the period July-September 2009. A prior agreement expired 1 July, and this week’s negotiated settlement will go until 1 September 2010.
Another key issue resolved related to NUM’s ability to recruit into membership workers in higher-level classifications. BHP originally demanded a 66% vote, but last Monday’s resolve moved that to the standard 50% plus one, or a simple majority.
Related to the parity issues, the two sides agreed to establish a separate bilateral forum to address and even out the disproportionate medical and transportation benefits between white and black workers. A deadline of 30 December 2009 has been put on resolving that.
The same deadline holds for dealing with the employment equity between women and men, as well as the company’s draconian policy of not granting maternity leave to women who have less than three years of employment service.
The agreement “was not all that we had hoped for,” stated Phiri, “but we are forever thankful for the outside pressure that moved a management that had before been so stubborn to address workers concerns.”
BHP operates Hozatel under its Middelplaats Manganese subsidiary, an asset it acquired with its partial buy-up of Semancor in the 1980s. The mine and ferrochrome smelting facility had originally been part of AngloAmerican.