JOHANNESBURG, May 5 (Reuters) – South African President Jacob Zuma has accused the AMCU union of irresponsibility for dragging out a wage strike in the platinum sector for almost four months, telling reporters there was a risk of workers losing their jobs because of the dispute.
Zuma, who has made little previous direct comment about the strike, took aim at the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) on Monday, underscoring political concerns about the stoppage and its impact on Africa’s most advanced economy, ahead of general elections on Wednesday.
“The union leaders have a responsibility … to ensure workers are protected so they don’t lose their jobs. You can’t get into a strike that at the end the workers lose their jobs. That’s your responsibility,” Zuma told a news conference.
Mining companies joined the attack on AMCU, saying intimidation was being used to keep its members in line and they would continue with their strategy of putting their offer directly to employees to bypass the union’s leadership. But using typically combative language and evoking class warfare, AMCU President Joseph Mathunjwa lashed out at the “platinum cabal” and its “exploitation of workers.”
Mathunjwa told a news conference the 15-week strike, the longest and most costly ever in South Africa’s mines, would continue and no new wage talks were scheduled.
The strike at the world’s top producers of the precious metal – Anglo American Platinum, Lonmin and Impala Platinum – has hit 40 percent of global production.
The prospect of a painful restructuring in the platinum sector, including steep job cuts, has made the strike a headache for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and President Zuma as he vies for a second term in office.
“The very fact that you can introduce a kind of threshold that you are not prepared to move on, it says there’s something wrong with AMCU,” Zuma said.
LIVING WAGE
AMCU is high on the ANC radar screen after it emerged as the top union in the platinum belt in 2012, having poached tens of thousands of members from the once-unrivalled National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), a key political ally of the ruling party.
The companies are offering increases of up to 10 percent that they say would raise the overall minimum pay package to 12,500 rand ($1,200) a month by July 2017, including cash allowances such as for housing.
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