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South Africa: National Union of Mineworkers to ask for double-digit increase in pay for miners
The National Union of Mineworkers, an ally of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress, said it will ask for a double-digit increase in pay when negotiating with the Chamber of Mines in May.
The demand will apply across the mining industry, National Union of Mineworkers’ Secretary-General Frans Baleni said by mobile phone today. “We will try to conclude the negotiations before July 1,” he said.
With industrywide wage talks looming, tensions between labor groups are intensifying. Lonmin Plc ended a six-week strike at Marikana last year by agreeing to pay increases for workers of 11 percent to 22 percent. Strikes in 2012 spread from platinum to gold and coal mines, costing Africa’s biggest economy 4.5 billion rand (US$494 million).
The union was founded in 1982 by workers including Cyril Ramaphosa, who went on to lead the largest-ever industrial action in the country’s gold industry five years later.
The National Union of Mineworkers vies with the National Union of Metalworkers to be the biggest in the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which has been in alliance with the ANC since the first all-race elections in 1994.
“A couple of companies are making profits,” Baleni said, adding that the union is keeping track of fluctuations in commodity prices.
Platinum prices have declined 5.9 percent and gold has retreated 8.5 percent this year. South Africa produces three-quarters of the world’s platinum output.
