6,000 jobs to go at state-owned mines in Botswana

On 7 October, the government of Botswana announced that it was closing its largest copper and nickel producer BCL Limited with immediate effect.  BCL Limited, which was put into provisional liquidation on 9 October, owns the BCL copper mine in Selebi Phikwe and the Tati Nickel Mine in Francistown.

IndustriALL Global Union affiliate, the Botswana Mine Workers Union (BMWU), says workers are gripped in shock and disbelief following revelation of the closures, which came without any warning.  

Latest reports are that all the 5,500 workers at the BCL mine and 700 workers at Tati will have their contracts terminated at the end of the month. These do not include an estimated 1,000 contractor workers at BCL. Some miners will be reemployed by the liquidator to care for and maintain the mines until February 2017.

“The situation is extremely unfair on the workers. We have a retrenchment agreement but the liquidator does not want to fulfill it. He thinks it is not a contractual agreement for shareholders and only wants to pay the bare minimum. Since the liquidator was appointed we have been unable to meet with him,” said Jack Tlhagale, President of the BMWU. “We don’t believe there is a good reason to close the mines. These mines should be reopened.”

IndustriALL Global Union has written to the Vice President of Botswana, Mr Mokgweetsi Masisi, calling on the government to reverse its decision to shut down the mines and to engage with BMWU.

BMWU says government claims that it has been pumping money into BCL are untrue and the last time it injected cash into the BCL mine was in 2003. The union argues that BCL can be profitable if managed correctly, and that the government should also have made financial provisions for the normal fluctuations in commodity prices, which are expected to recover in 2018.

In the meantime the government has failed to terminate employees with any decency: “Workers need to be repatriated,” said Tlhagale. “They are living in company houses and have nowhere to go.”

BMWU says the government has failed to explain how workers on anti-retroviral treatment and other medical conditions will be treated, or clarify what will happed to the school-going children of employees subsidized by the company.

IndustriALL’s general secretary, Valter Sanches, said: “The rash decision to close the mines and cut thousands of jobs is a catastrophe for the miner workers and their families. The government must do everything in its power to reverse the decision, save jobs and rebuild the mining industry in Botswana. The government cannot just toy with lives of workers and their families. They deserve at the very least to be treated with respect and dignity.”

On 11 October, BCL Mine pulled out of a US$337 million deal with Russian-owned Norilsk Nickel Africa to buy its 50 per cent share in the Nkomati nickel operation in South Africa. Commentators say that the reason for putting the BCL into provisional liquidation is protect it to exposure from creditors, including the failed purchase of Nkomati. 

Action in Nigeria on 7 October

South African metalworkers win 35% wage increase

IndustriALL Global Union affiliate the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA) has settled a dispute with the Automobile Manufacturers Employers’ Organisation, the employer body that includes automobile manufacturers Nissan, Ford, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Renault and VW.

The agreement will see a 35 per cent wage increase spread over three years, with 10% in the first year, 8% in the second year and 8% in the third year. The agreement will also provide a 20% shift allowance, and increases in transport and housing subsidies.

NUMSA action spokesperson Patrick Craven said:

“We feel this is a good deal in the circumstances, and we’re very pleased that our members have endorsed it. In other sectors, tough negotiations are proceeding.”

NUMSA declared a dispute with the employers’ group in July. After prolonged negotiations, an agreement was reached and signed on 12 September. This is the first time in nine years that an agreement was reached in the sector without strike action. In 2013, a strike by NUMSA in both manufacturing and components caused severe disruption in the sector.

NUMSA general secretary Irvin Jim said that while negotiations went smoothly in the auto manufacturing sector, strike action was looming in the components sector, because of employers’ failure to make a meaningful offer.

NUMSA is fighting the fragmentation of bargaining councils in the sector, and is still in dispute with the Fuel Retailers Association and the Retail Motor Industry Organisation.

“We wish to inform bosses in the sectors where negotiations are going on to come to the party and make meaningful offers. We will move very swiftly from now onwards to mobilize workers to push employers in sectors still negotiating to swiftly complete the current round of negotiations,” said Irvin Jim.

Helmut Lense, IndustriALL director for the Automotive and Rubber sectors, said:

“This is a good negotiated settlement for NUMSA members in the auto manufacturing industry. Employers in related sectors need to come to the table with a meaningful offer, and end the uncertainty in the sector.”

South Africa’s growing auto manufacturing sector is an import contributor to the country’s GDP and exports.

Young and Unionized

The workshop, with representatives of unions affiliated to IndustriALL Global Union in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho was held on 5 and 6 September, with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

The workshop was attended by 20 people, nine of them women, who debated how best to organize young people in unions. The ILO defines youth as being 15 to 24 – a group that is vulnerable to exploitation when they become formal or informal workers in Africa.

By contrast, most unions define youth as members who are under 35. While this ensures that young workers who gain late entry to employment still have access to youth programmes, affiliates must be encouraged to consider varying needs; the needs of a young teenage worker are different than a worker who is in their early thirties.

Participants pointed out that unions needed the youth to be representative of the workforce. The African continent has a young population and the typical worker in our workplaces is under 35 years old. This is to some extent reflected in our unions in Southern Africa where there is good youth participation in structures especially those close to the ground but also increasingly in leadership roles. However, this is not the case in all affiliates in the region. In some unions there is a resistance to development of youth members. This is reflected in poor commitment to education generally in many union and to internal development of structures to ensure active and democratic participation.

Intense discussions were held on whether unions needed youth structures in the union or if these structures enabled youth issues to be sidelined by lack of support and resources. Concerns were raised that without structures youth issues would not be prioritized in the union. Participants agreed that at the very least unions should have youth policies which address representation and enable youth programmes.

Participants agreed that unions need to transform to organizing to be inclusive and give all members a role in organizing, from retired members to share experience, to older members mentoring younger ones and young members that inspire youth to join the union. Unions need to recognize that many young workers are also parents of young children and a supportive environment will encourage their participation. Participants also noted that these inclusive approaches must ensure that there is no discrimination based on sexual and gender orientation in our unions. 

Participants had a lengthy discussion on education, defined as skills or knowledge based. Whilst unions have a role to play in ensure young workers have access to skills development, worker education was identified as critical to ensure that class struggle continues to be fuelled with young blood. Participants proposed that independent worker education, already established in some countries, is networked by IndustriALL in the African region to ensure that young members of affiliated unions can access education programmes.

Participants agreed that a key campaign for youth in the region is the living wage campaign as youth in the region can be defined as the working poor. They proposed that the living wage campaign is taken up at a regional level across all sectors. The African Youth Charter has progressive clauses that can be used to encourage industrialisation and making available resources to young people to productively contribute to their communities and the economy. Participants motivated that an IndustriALL regional youth structure could engage with the African youth movement at the AU level.

Participants went through the proposal put forward by the Youth representative of Latin American affiliates and have endorsed this. A least one of the participants will be able to present on behalf of the region at the Youth meeting taking place in Rio before the Congress where it is hoped the proposal of youth collectives will be adopted.

Nigeria: unions stage national protest over labour crisis

The protest was organized by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in solidarity with workers in Imo, Nasarawa and Benue states over protracted wage issues, which led to the killing of two workers in Nasarawa in July.
 
Despite a bailout from the federal government, more than 20 states in Nigeria have been unable to pay monthly salaries. Some workers have not been paid since January 2016. In some states, workers have had their pay and hours cut, and have been told to go and grow food for themselves on farms, under a Back to the Land programme designed to cut costs.
 
Protests were held across the country. In Lagos, the protest was lead by Issa Aremu, the general secretary of IndustriALL Global Union affiliate the National Union of Textile and Garment Workers, a member of the national executive committee of the NLC, and chairperson of IndustriALL in sub-Saharan Africa.
 
Aremu called on president Muhammadu Buhari and labour minister Chris Ngige to intervene and urge the governors of Benue, Imo and Nasarawa states to respect Nigerian labour law and stop wage cuts and the arbitrary redeployment of workers to farms to avoid paying them.
 
Aremu highlighted the situation in Nasarawa state, where two workers were killed when police opened fire on a protest on 29 July 2016 against the failure to pay salaries. A further two workers received gunshot wounds. State governor Tanko Al-Makura arbitrarily cut workers’ pay by 50% and threatened to sack striking workers and replace them with “fresh graduates”.
 
Aremu said:
 
“No colonial governor during the hated British colonialism so verbally casualized the dignity of labour with respect to contracts of employment on pay and tenure as governor Tanko Al-Makura unacceptably did.”
 
Aremu pointed out that constitution of Nigeria explicitly guarantees the sanctity of public service at both federal and state levels, with adequate security of tenure, hours of work, health and safety, adequate remuneration and pensions. The constitution guarantees decent work for civil servants in the public service and does not subject them to the whims of executive governors.
 
He argued that it is “bad governance” to “shift the burden of declining revenue onto the workforce” while maintaining the huge cost of the executive overhead. To turn civil servants into farmers overnight as a cost cutting measure is “an unacceptable joke”.
Referring to the killing of workers in Nasarawa state, he said:
 
“The unprovoked action by the police against unarmed workers on a peaceful protest is criminal and unacceptable. It is a gross violation of workers’ rights to protest as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution and International Labour Organization provisions. We support the demand by the NLC for the Nasarawa state government to investigate the incident, apprehend the culprits and bring them to justice.”
 
Fernando Lopes, IndustriALL assistant general secretary, said:
 
“The situation in Nigeria is absolutely disgraceful: attempting to balance the books by cutting salaries and telling workers to become farmers. It is outrageous that workers were killed by the police for protesting against this arbitrary and unlawful move.
 
“We expect the government of Nigeria to intervene and ensure that workers are paid properly, that the right to organize and freely assemble is respected, and that those who ordered the killing of workers are brought to justice”.
 
The labour minister responded to the demands of the protest by convening a meeting between union leaders and the government of Nasarawa state on 30 August. The state of Nasarawa agreed to compensate the families of the workers who were killed. The issue of unpaid salaries remains unresolved.

IndustriALL affiliates ready to tackle minimum wage in Uganda

During an IndustriALL Global Union workshop in Kampala on 25 and 26 August, supported by the FES, 25 workers, including 9 women, from affiliate unions in the mining and metal, textile, chemical and engineering sectors came together to determine how to engage the government on the revision of the minimum wage. Participants also looked at ways trade unions can contribute to establishing a minimum wage that is decent and will improve workers’ lives in Uganda.

Yoweri Museveni, who has been President of Uganda for the past thirty years, has recently softened his position on the minimum wage, so together unions at the workshop decided to be proactive and take a common approach in setting an agenda for discussions around the minimum wage, as well as other potent labour issues.

Workers were taken through the pros and cons of a minimum wage versus industry bargaining where workers are set to benefit more. The latter would however necessitate strong national unions in the various sectors, which is currently not the case. Uganda has seen a fragmentation of unions over the years in all sectors, weakening union’s bargaining power.

Affiliated unions at the workshop agreed to:

South African petrochemical workers win three-week strike

The deal is the culmination of a three-week strike that started on 28 July and was supported by some 15,000 petroleum workers at refineries, including the biggest owned by Chevron, Shell, BP and Sasol.
 
The strike affected the fuel supply in Gauteng province, where two of the country’s most important cities are located, the capital Pretoria and the largest city Johannesburg, the industrial hub of the country.
 
Although the quantitative effect of the strike was not extremely high, the strike forced the employers to recur to contingency measures to prevent fuel disruption across the country.
 
The initial workers’ demand included a 9 per cent wage increase, to compensate for the current inflation rate of 6.3 per cent. According to the new agreement the employers will pay 7 per cent raise this year and 1.5 per cent hike next year. Workers will receive their increase starting from July.
 
According to the new agreement employers also met workers’ demand for shift allowance although at a smaller rate.
 
Workers are supposed return to their workplaces on Monday, 22 August.
 
Commenting on the reached agreement CEPPWAWU chief negotiator, Jerry Nkosi said, “The strike was generally successful and finished with workers’ victory and improved working conditions. One disturbing factor though is that some companies including  SASOL and Total at the the refinery called Natref used union bashing tactics by paying workers a bonus for no participation in a strike. The strategy backfired, as the company later stopped the payments, but that has already dampened the moral of other workers in other establishments such as Engen, Shell and BP. This made the strike also difficult for the union.”

1,700 jobs under threat at South Africa gold mine

The NUM has said it is shocked and saddened to receive notice from Sibanye Gold of the retrenchments of almost the entire workforce at its operation in Westonaria, west of Johannesburg.

In a statement on 11 July, the NUM called on the Minister of Mineral Resources, Mosebenzi Zwane, to intervene immediately to stop the retrenchments that will leave hundreds of mineworkers and surrounding communities in a dire situation.

"The NUM will fight tooth and nail to make sure that its members are not retrenched cheaply. The NUM remains fearless, committed, dedicated and unshaken in fighting for the mineworkers. The NUM does not want to see mineworkers being retrenched. We will engage Sibanye Gold,” said the union. 

Sibanye intends to shut down the unprofitable mineshaft at Cooke 4 to concentrate on other operations at Cooke 1, 2 and 3. However, the NUM says that the mine has been operating at a loss because of improper planning in terms of labour and production.

NUM says the company has failed to provide proper and adequate equipment needed to reach production targets, and that the operation is pumping out water at a cost of R18 million (US$1.25 million) a month.

However, Cooke 4 could be profitable, argues NUM, if Sibanye recruits new, skilled employees, changes the infrastructure and resolves the geological issues underground.

“With so many jobs and livelihoods at stake, we urge Sibanye Gold to explore all means possible of salvaging the mine at Cooke 4 and dedicate the right people and the right resources to turning it around,” said IndustriALL’s assistant general secretary Kemal Özkan.

The NUM will have the first consultation meeting with Sibanye Gold on 20 July under the auspices of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration. The NUM is meeting with all the affected employees.

Botswana: IndustriALL calls for immediate action at deadly mine

The BCL mine employs around 5,000 employees, of which over 3,200 are union members represented by IndustriALL Global Union affiliate, the Botswana Mine and Allied Workers Union (BMWU).

Frustrated at the government’s inaction the BMWU staged a demonstration on 6 July 2016, in Botswana’s capital Gaborone where union leader Jack Tlhagale handed over a petition to the country’s vice-president Mokgweetsi Masisi.

“The mine has been a problem for a long time – security and productivity have declined. Despite the mineworkers’ appeals to the company management and the government there has been no improvement. The company also threatens to retrench many of our members and close some of the shafts,” said Tlhagale.

The BMWU’s petition is clear and calls on the government to:

Vice-president Masisi assured BCL mineworkers that the government would investigate the declining safety issues: "We don't want employees to feel unsafe at work. We don't want a situation where miners go to work asking themselves whether they are going to be able to come back to their families," said Masisi.

"This is simply not enough. It is not only workers’ livelihoods that are at stake but also their lives. If the government continues to postpone action on the deteriorating safety conditions at the mine, it will certainly result in more deaths,” said IndustriALL general secretary, Jyrki Raina.

IndustriALL calls on the Botswana government to involve the BMWU in measures to ensure that adequate health and safety standards be put in place immediately to avoid any further preventable accidents at the BCL mine.  It is equally important to include the union in the development of a plan for the BCL mine to become economically viable and ensure job security for the workers.

In a letter to Botswana’s Vice-president, IndustriALL calls the Government to involve the BMWU in the implementation of measures to ensure that adequate health and safety standards be put in place immediately to avoid any further preventable accidents at the BCL mine.  It is equally important to include the union in the development of a plan for the Bamangwato Concessions Ltd. (BCL) mine to become economically viable but also to ensure job security of the workers.

Worker rights violations under spotlight at the ILO

ILO’s Committee on Application of Standards (the Standards Committee or CAS) dealt in June with a number of complaints on violations of workers’ rights, with special focus on countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Cambodia and Mexico.

Bangladeshi union representatives told the Committee that while there was progress in improving safety in the major garment industry, freedom of association remained a problem.

In the immediate aftermath of the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, many new unions in the Bangladeshi ready-made garment sector were registered. In the last two years, union registration has become increasingly difficult with about 70 per cent of new registrations being rejected, in particularly those filed by independent unions.

IndustriALL regional secretary Apoorva Kaiwar told the Standards Committee that aggressive union busting by management has led to a reduced number of active unions, leaving workers with little or no protection against employers. In addition, trade unions are completely banned in Bangladesh’s export processing zones.

As a result of the increasing anti-union climate in the country and the feeble efforts taken by the government to ensure workers’ rights under ILO Convention 87 on freedom of association and the right to organize, the ILO Standards Committee noted the country as a “special paragraph”.

Worker representatives from Indonesia testified about violent attacks on workers by police and armed thugs.

Prihanani Boenadi, from IndustriALL affiliate FSPMI, called on the government to stop violations against workers and that state security is not used to suppress the right to freedom of association, as happened in November 2015 when 25 demonstrators were arrested in Jakarta for protesting against being shut out of the wage-setting process.

The Standards Committee “expressed deep concern regarding the numerous allegations” and urged the Indonesian government to ensure that workers are able to engage freely and that those responsible for the violence are charged.

Ath Thorn from Cambodian IndustriALL affiliate CCAWDU told of violence against trade union leaders, illegal terminations of union leaders, political interference, short term contracts and discrimination against pregnant workers.

The Committee decided to send and ILO Direct Contacts mission to Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, Swaziland, Kazakhstan and Mauritania, to assess progress related to conclusions from the CAS.

Mexican mining union Los Mineros’ president and IndustriALL Executive Committee member Napoleón Gómez addressed the Standards Committee on the widespread use of protection contracts made between yellow unions and companies without workers’ consent, and the intimidation and threats to trade unions. Gómez called for an immediate finalization of a labour law reform, based on proposals made in April 2016.

The Mexican government had brought a delegation of 70 representatives from government, business and trade unions to the ILC. However, only one single trade union representative in the delegation was from a democratic union.

The Standards Committee urged the government to fulfill legal obligations and ensure that “trade unions are able to exercise their right to freedom of association in practice".