These revelations cast doubt on the integrity of previous
negotiations, something workers seemed to have picked up on. Even as the NUM
reels from a dramatic drop in membership following the Marikana massacre, the
miners’ union faces a further embarrassing problem from an unexpected quarter.
The mining houses having decided to terminate this “very uncomfortable
arrangement”, and are planning to meet with NUM about it within two weeks.
The unions have yet to be officially notified, but Daily
Maverick has learnt that the top officials have been alerted to the termination
of this agreement by the mining houses that pay their salaries, “as a matter of
courtesy”.
After decades of following this underhanded practice, the
mining houses that make up the Chamber of Mines have decided to cease paying
the salaries of prominent unionists, including the NUM president Senzeni
Zokwana (paid by Anglo Gold Ashanti), deputy president Piet Mathosa (paid by
the BHP Billiton), as well as one or two elected office bearers of both
Solidarity and UASA. (Apart from being NUM president, Zokwana is the chairman
of the SACP and the ANC NEC member.)
The chief executive of the Chamber of Mines, Bheki Sibiya,
told the Daily Maverick: “Yes, indeed I want to confirm that the practice has
continued for a while. It was initiated at the behest of NUM who felt we had to
help them with capacity building. These were our employees.”
NUM’s Zokwana said that the DM’s call was the first he had
heard of the arrangement being terminated, adding that “those agreements are
ended by union and companies; it will have to be debated - if Anglo (Gold
Ashanti) wish to do that, that will have to be negotiated. It will not be
between Anglo (Gold Ashanti) and myself – it will be between AngloGold and the
union.”
The chamber’s members felt that, in the interests of good
governance and transparency, the “very uncomfortable” situation should be
terminated. Apparently there will be a meeting between the affected parties
within the next fortnight.
Archie Palane, a former NUM official who rose to prominence
during his work on the platinum belt (not elected, and thus paid from union
subscriptions) says that the practice had its genesis in 1987. “The full-time
position was negotiated and agreed upon as an outcome of the 1987 strike where
James Motlatsi was fired by Anglo (American).”
The NUM began to look at its options, and wondered if any of
its active and militant leaders would survive within the industry. Palane says
that, back then, there was a strategy of either firing effective unionists or
of hiring them into a managerial role. “Then once there, they lose touch with
the workers. That is why you would find union leaders would be moved into
management and then management would find a way of getting rid of them because
management don’t forget what you cost them, what chaos you caused them.”
Palane concludes, “So it was an NEC decision. We were not
going to allow the leadership of the union to be intimidated and victimised by
management… for being militant.”
Over time, this position was extended to national, regional
and branch leaders.
Despite the pitfalls of conflicted interests, NUM pushed the
mines to pay unionists’ salaries. At the lower end, full-time shaft or shop
stewards received a few thousand rands extra per month to bring them to a
Patterson C level pay grade – roughly R12,000 to R14,000 a month. In addition
they received a company petrol card, company cell phone and a company vehicle.
Then there were the other perks – bosberaads or company get-togethers,
international excursions, etc. Obviously, these unionists did not do another
underground shift; they were freed from the arduous labour and conditions that
had encouraged them to join the union in the first place.
The arrangement with the mines that were their original
employers was that should shop stewards not be re-elected, they would return to
their old jobs. This was not something anyone wished to do. Palane explains how
he watched union values be eroded: “You are a full-time shop steward and you
have a lifestyle change, you start driving a car. The danger was when people
began to see material gains, the shop stewards lost touch with the rank and
file.” Palane explains that they would do anything to resist losing those
positions. “It was,” Palane explains, “now more a cabal.”
The human resources folk at the mines understood this, and
encouraged the union representatives to do further training so that they could
find a job at the mine on a grade that allowed them to retain their elevated
salaries.
While these privileges provoked some jealousies among
miners, most accepted it was in their favour to have full-time shop stewards.
But the element of such striving for personal gain rather than a concern with
the needs of the union members led to deadly competition. Many of the deaths
related to strikes in the platinum belt were as a direct result of different
factions vying for the full-time shop steward positions.
The perceived lack of proper service delivered to the
unions’ workers because of the split loyalties of their union representatives,
was part of the mix of gripes that led to the non-union wildcat strikes at in
the platinum belt in recent times, including Lonmin’s Marikana.
In fact, the chief negotiator for NUM during the Marikana
strike at Lonmin that resulted in 45 deaths was Erick Gcilitshana. Gcilitshana
is the NUM's health and safety national secretary - a full-time position. His
salary is one of those that is also said to be paid for by the mining house he
was elected from – Lonmin. The mine workers stated clearly what they thought
about that in their rejection of NUM – Lonmin now has a massive AMCU majority.
Zokwana defended the secondment practice: “I don’t think
there is a conflict. The conflict would arise as soon as it overrides the
organisation issues. The agreement is to ensure leaders are available at 24
hours to be available. The moment you are released on secondment you do not
report to the employer but you report to the union, you are not under the
control of the employer…
“There is nothing wrong; what is wrong is when the seconded
individual forgets the instance of his secondment. That judgement call is made
by the members (at the three-yearly elections) when they decide if you are
serving the interest of business or their interests.
“The question is, is this person still relevant to lead us
or not?”
The striking Lonmin miners were adamant that they did not
want NUM to represent them, and on the day before the massacre, they refused to
allow NUM president Zokwana to address them. They were clear that they saw a
serious conflict of interest in the dominant union’s arrangement with the
mines. Zokwana’s salary is paid for by AngloGold Ashanti, that of his deputy
Piet Mathosa by BHP Billiton.
Both union and mining insiders have said that NUM president
Zokwana’s salary was similar to that of the general secretary.
The position of general secretary of NUM is one that is
actually paid for from the union’s own coffers, and the Mail & Guardian
previously reported that to be R1.4 million per annum, including perks. In the
storm after that sum was leaked last year, Baleni stated that his deputy earned
just R1,000 less a month than him. The M&G also reported that Baleni earns
an additional R400,000 a year for being on the board of the Development Bank of
South Africa.
The mining industry kept the arrangement quiet, the salaries
going off their books every month. The top unionists benefitting from the deal
also kept their mouths shut.
One mining industry insider said “the arrangement was
embarrassing for all of us.”
The sweetheart deal with NUM could not remain under wraps
forever, especially as Joseph Mathunjwa, the founder of NUM’s main rival union,
AMCU, had once been an elected NUM representative.
The Chamber’s Sibiya related that “at some stage Matunjwa
became aware of the practice and requested it apply to him. It was applied to
him. And then UASA requested it and it was applied to them.” Sibiya
subsequently confirmed that Solidarity is also part of the arrangement. It
would seem that there were only two from AMCU on ‘secondment’ –president
Mathunjwa and deputy president Jimmy Gama, but both were terminated by BHP
Billiton in September or October 2012, since AMCU no longer had enough members
at the company to reach the required percentage.
Mathunjwa has a different version of events. He says the
deal was proposed by BHP, and was a settlement for a complicated dismissal
procedure that had to be reversed. BHP, he says, “said they would extend the
same deal to me as they had with NUM.”
The salary was a Patterson D lower, which is essentially a
supervisor’s salary, that Mathunjwa says gave him about R25,000 a month as a
basic salary. The perks and expenses incurred in travelling to meetings called
by management were often not paid, he said in an interview.
Mathunjwa claims the NUM deputy president who was also at
BHP, Piet Mathosa, was paid a much higher grade – E – that is equivalent to a
general manager’s salary. “Not all animals are equal,” he quipped, alluding to
the George Orwell classic, Animal Farm.
Solidarity and UASA only have one or two officials each
benefitting from the deal, the Chamber of Mines said.
Last year, in radio debate during the Marikana strike, a NUM
representative had quite cynically accused Mathunjwa of being paid by the
Chamber of Mines, which the Chamber of Mines denied, not knowing that one of
their members was in fact paying the AMCU president’s salary. The accusation
was made even though NUM was well aware of just how many of its elected
officials were on mining house secondment salaries.
In 2011, the Chamber of Mines, perhaps invigorated by a new
breed of chief executive among the mining houses, began a process of, as Sibiya
puts it, “putting South Africa first and dealing with the legacy of the past.
And we saw this as one of a broad range of legacies.” Among these was the
practice of the mines keeping union officials on their books and paying them
vast salaries, when once those unionists had laboured underground for a few
thousand rands.
Sibiya told Daily Maverick:
“We were worried about perceived conflict of interest, that
it may potentially be problematic, and we started the process of termination.”
Sibiya related that “when top NUM officials were told that
the practice was to be terminated, they said, ‘Do you know what the financial
implications [for] us will be?’ We said yes.”
A mining insider familiar with the arrangement confided:
“NUM is going to be pissed off with us, because this is a historic thing; they
won’t be happy. (But) it can’t be business as usual - things have changed with
this Marikana thing.”
He further added that the NUM national office was said to
employ about 300 people, and for the union to have to carry such a burden alone
would prove difficult. The mining houses also pay the regional and branch NUM
unionists. These were not insignificant amounts of money in a constrained
economic period. Other sources put the number of NUM head office people on
secondment at far less – some 40 people, a number that many within the mining
industry still find appallingly high.
There was obviously a perception that this might curry
favour with the union-elected officials, all of which, in turn, might work in
the corporations’ favour. While two mining insiders denied this, mineworkers on
the ground have a different opinion. During the Marikana strike, and its
aftermath, mineworkers who were NUM members referred to their then-union as the
National Union of Management.
The former NUM office bearer, Archie Palane, said that the
practice was so controversial that the iconic British trade unionist Arthur
Scargill scathingly attacked the South African miners’ representatives for
accepting such a potentially compromising deal. Scargill’s criticisms were
ignored.
Palane said NUM decided that their president’s salary should
be at more than or at the same level as that of their secretary general. “It
was seen that we cannot top up the president’s or deputy president’s salaries by
subscriptions, it should be negotiated (with the mines).” Palane laughed when
he related that “[i]f you go in there and the employer shivers; he gives more…”
The mining forum insists that they never gained an
advantageous effect from the deal.
The individual mines have been tasked with informing their
employees who are full time unionists that the arrangement is to be terminated.
Those affected by the termination of the arrangement will be at national,
regional and branch level. The shop stewards at the mines who are on the
arrangement will be unaffected, and will continue to get the increased salary
and perks as they are considered vital to the smooth running of the mines.
In a recent rally in Rustenburg, NUM acknowledged that they
had lost 34,000 members to AMCU. A mining analyst who follows these events
closely says the figure is closer to 80,000. If true, this pushes NUM from
being the most powerful union within COSATU to the number four position,
altering the balance of power within the federation.
Since NUM president Senzeni Zokwana is also a member of the
ANC NEC, as well as the chairman of the SACP, there is likely to be massive
political fallout from these revelations, as it exposes the most severe
conflict of interest cloaked under the rhetoric of union militancy.
As the mining industry braces for the wage negotiation
season this winter, it remains unclear what effect this massive change in the
rules of the game will have on workers and the mines. It is also unclear if the
NUM leadership will try to rally their members to protect their salaries.
