Amcu makes demands, but how much power does it really have?

Its ability to really influence anything hinges on whether it has a strict majority in any one of the three major corporations involved: AngloGold Ashanti, Sibanye and Harmony.

Apart from sky-high basic wage demands, Amcu is also attacking more of the structures built up by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the chamber, including the R25 billion Mineworkers Provident Fund (TMPF), which historically has the lower-grade mine workers in gold and coal mines as members.

Amcu’s formal demands, delivered to mining companies this week, also attack other fundamental cogs in the mining labour machine, including the benefit system for injured and incapacitated workers, the length of the working week and the job grading system underpinning the hierarchy in mines.

As in 2013, the last time the gold mines had wage talks, Amcu wants the minority unions out and wants the long-standing Chamber of Mines bargaining forum dismantled.

But demands are only demands. Amcu still faces the same hurdles that neutered its attempt to breach the gold sector in 2013.

Its membership has rocketed from only 17% of the workers at all the companies put together to about 29% now.

That number, however, doesn’t really matter.

What matters legally is whether it has a majority at any of the individual companies.

Otherwise, the other unions could sign a binding deal, leaving Amcu powerless to launch a protected strike or insist on continued bargaining.

That is precisely what happened in 2013.

Amcu already has four different disputes around its recognition at mines pending at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, Amcu president Joseph Mathunjwa told journalists this week.

The union’s numbers are far higher than the mines admit, said Mathunjwa, without elaborating.

However, he stopped short of claiming that Amcu had displaced the NUM as the majority union in the gold sector, but emphasised that Amcu was dominant at several individual mines.

A source in the industry, however, said those disputes had already been resolved and that the numbers were in fact what the chamber said they were.

While Amcu wants to break the chamber’s forum and have the three employers bargain individually, the mines seem committed to the collective approach, which sets the bar at what their weakest mines can afford.

Amcu would prefer to bargain on a mine-to-mine basis for the opposite reason. While the industry overall is suffering financially, there are several huge gold mines that are still raking in cash.

Amcu’s wage demand is more complicated than asking for the symbolic R12 500 – it wants most workers’ basic wage to be increased by R7 000, with higher-level workers gaining R6 500.

In addition to that, it wants major increases to the various allowances as well.

Then it is also asking for the bottom two levels of the job grading system to get “rolled up”, with all the workers jumping to the next level, which also means an increase.

All told, the demands come to at least R10 000 per worker. The gold industry spends an average of about R16 000 per employee a month – so, in reality, the demand is for about a 60% increase in the wage bill.

The total industry wage bill is just below R2 billion a month, making the Amcu wage demand worth at least R1 billion a month for all the gold mines put together.

A new and possibly crucial demand is for the provident savings of Amcu members to be transferred out of the TMPF.

This fund is one of the legacies of the NUM’s rise in the late 1980s. It was created in 1989 to manage a retirement savings system for black mine workers.

The only other major mining sector retirement fund is Sentinel, set up in the 1940s for whites in higher job levels, but which now caters for most of the platinum sector as well.

Today, the TMPF has 237 000 members and assets of R25 billion. Amcu wants to carve out a large chunk of this and put it into its own new fund, which will be called Igula.

Igula had not been registered by mid-March, according to the Financial Services Board’s records, but Mathunjwa said it would be “announced in due course”.

Asked why Amcu wanted its own fund, Mathunjwa claimed the TMPF invested mine workers’ savings badly, leading to pitiful payouts on retirement.

“I’ve never seen a worker leave a mine and be able to build a house with his or her provident fund,” he said.

The established medical schemes in the mines were also in Amcu’s sights. Their cover was poor and the service providers should be reviewed, the union demanded.

Rand Mutual Association, the insurance group collectively owned by the mines, is also in the cross hairs. It handles the statutory compensation for workplace injuries for the mines, while most other sectors rely on the state’s long-suffering Compensation Fund.

Amcu is demanding a lump sum of R120 000 for workers who lose their jobs due to injury. This is apparently on top of the statutory compensation provided by Rand Mutual, which generally takes the form of a pension.

Wage talks

Unions in the public sector were meeting on Friday afternoon to consider the new government offer announced on Monday.