Cosatu congress opens in Midrand with 1 800 delegates and mining jobs on the table

SABC News reports that Cosatu’s 15th national congress has opened in Midrand with about 1 800 delegates from 16 affiliate unions in the hall, and that the National Union of Mineworkers has put the state of the mining industry at the centre of the four-day gathering.

The NUM is Cosatu’s second largest affiliate by membership, behind the public sector union Nehawu. Its deputy general secretary, Phillip Mankge, said the congress meets at a moment when mineworkers are losing jobs to a combination of pressures, and that the federation should use the week to review the direction of national policy with growth and sustained mining employment in mind.

Those pressures are not abstract for the households that depend on a mine wage. A shaft that goes onto care and maintenance stops paying a salary, and the knock-on runs through the local spaza, the taxi route and the school fees in the town around it. The NUM’s point is that the industry’s troubles have arrived together, and that a congress held once every four years is the place to answer them.

What the delegates are debating

Mankge set out the union’s case in plain terms. A congress, he said, is a festival of ideas at the forefront of issues and should address the policy direction of the country. He said workers have identified gaps in many national policies, and that labour law amendments now before the country are not favourable to workers.

His list of what is squeezing the industry is specific. A stagnant economy, the spread of automation, the depletion of reserves and falling commodity prices are combining to push mines toward closure, care and maintenance, and liquidation. Retrenchment, he said, is rife from corner to corner.

The congress will also debate the federation’s political strategy and elect the leadership that will guide Cosatu for the next four years, so the decisions taken in Midrand will outlast the week itself.

The number that matters

Sixteen affiliate unions and roughly 1 800 delegates are the arithmetic of the meeting. Cosatu’s weight in bargaining, in the National Economic Development and Labour Council and in the policy arguments that reach Parliament depends on those affiliates holding together behind a common position, and a congress is where that position is settled.

For a mineworker in Rustenburg, Welkom or Phalaborwa, the practical question is narrower. Will the federation’s four-year programme put enough pressure on the policy questions that decide whether a shaft keeps running, whether a retrenchment notice is fought, and whether the law governing dismissal and restructuring gives a worker a fair hearing.

The wider industry picture

The mining sector remains one of the country’s largest employers and a major source of export earnings, and the pressures Mankge describes are structural rather than cyclical. Automation reduces the number of people needed to move the same tonnage. Reserves deplete as a matter of geology. Commodity prices move on global demand that no South African policy can set on its own.

That is the difficulty the congress has to work with. Policy can influence the speed of change, the terms on which workers leave, and whether new industries absorb the skills a mine leaves behind. It cannot repeal a price cycle.

What happens next

The congress continues in Midrand, where delegates will vote on the federation’s leadership and its programme for the next four years. The policy positions adopted there will shape Cosatu’s submissions on labour law amendments and its stance in the bargaining rounds that follow, including those covering the mines where the retrenchment notices are being issued.

Source: SABC News (website). Read the original item.