There’s one mining company that unions know they cannot push around. Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman and his core management team have a solid track record in refusing to buckle to unreasonable demands from organised labour.
It’s an example President Cyril Ramaphosa and his cabinet might want to study to find lessons on standing up to bullying from big unions, which are perceived to call the shots on issues affecting the national interest.
There’s a real chance that big business, represented in large interest bodies, will lose patience with the government if its proposal for economic recovery post-Covid is ignored or lost in endless political posturing.
While Ramaphosa and his economic cluster ministers welcomed the proposals, the president’s insistence on consensus and the need for unions to be involved in formulating an economic rescue strategy will kick business’s suggestions into the weeds.
Business temper is running thin and it could move into a transactional approach with the government in which sound policies and practices are awarded and those that aren’t encouraging lead to some sort of penalty.
The government’s relationship with unions has to be urgently addressed.
The delay in returning children to public schools has caused anger and allegations that Ramaphosa and his ministers have caved in to the SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu).
What can Ramaphosa and those around him learn from the private sector and one company in particular? It’s to not be pushed around by unions.
This is a problem when unions become a quasi-political party and determine national strategies and outcomes.
It is time that unions are decoupled from setting the national agenda
Unions play a critical role in the workplace, defending employees’ rights, but there must be a limit. If it’s not self-imposed the government must take responsible and mature action in the best interests of the country and not just its narrow political base.
The ANC needs the unions onside because it is in an alliance with Cosatu that brings it votes.
Unions are pandered to with favourable labour legislation that businesses have partly blamed for economic stagnation, and due to apartheid when black labour was regarded as cheap and disposable.
It is time that unions are decoupled from setting the national agenda.
The two most recent examples for Ramaphosa to consider are Sibanye’s handling of labour during a wage strike at its gold mines and its takeover of Lonmin.
The strike called by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) at Sibanye’s gold mines in 2018 dragged into 2019. It was a humiliating defeat for the self-styled militant Joseph Mathunjwa, the union’s president.
Sibanye won battle after battle in the labour courts and refused to blink as murderous violence and arson raged around its mines. In the end, Amcu signed a salary increase deal no different to that agreed by other unions five months earlier.
The strike cost Sibanye R1.5bn at the time and much more if the months taken to ramp up to pre-strike production levels and the opportunity costs are considered. Sibanye took a huge financial hit while it was deeply in debt.
Sound familiar? SA is headed rapidly towards a debt to GDP ratio topping 80% as the economy crumbles under the government’s handling of the Covid-19 outbreak that has already cost 3-million jobs.
Management sidelined
Sibanye regarded the strike as directly related to its R4.3bn all-share takeover of Lonmin where Amcu dominated. The union fought hard to resist it. Shareholders rather wanted management who could deliver value.
Sibanye management tells of coming into Lonmin and seeing management that had effectively been sidelined in their roles by Amcu, with the union making decisions.
In Sibanye wresting back control of the mines the groundwork was laid at the gold mines, sending an unequivocal message that management was in control, and would not be cowed by strikes and aggressive union leadership.
One of the sources in a Sunday Times story about the crisis in Eastern Cape hospitals was quoted as saying: “There are no managers there and those that are there are ... terrified by the unions. Nothing happens in the hospitals here without the unions’ buy-in.”
If Ramaphosa and his team are unable to take guidance from the capitalists, they can look to a fellow politician, albeit one at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum to that of the ANC.
Margaret Thatcher became UK prime minister in 1979 as Britain was going through a torrid time of strikes by unions. Ferdinand Mount, who headed her policy unit, described the unions as “politicised mafia” as Thatcher’s government confronted and broke the back of union power in the UK. Thatcher evokes strong opinions, but she won back the government’s right to govern.
It’s time for Ramaphosa and the ANC to put the country first and to stop pandering to unions, which have their own agendas separate from the national one, and one for which they have not been elected by the broad majority to set.
Breaking the back of SA’s unions will be a brutal task, but the country can no longer be beholden to organised labour calling the shots with a corrupt and incompetent ruling party.
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