Media Monitor 3 November 2009
Patrick Craven
COSATU Media Monitor
Tuesday 3 November 2009
Contents
1.1 NUM reports fatality at Gold Fields Kloof Mine
1.2 Mabasa Sama’s new chairperson
1.3 Cosatu demands action after slur on Mandela
1.4 Scrap contracts with Falcon Security - COSATU
2.1 Nationalise Tokyo’s wealth, says union
2.2 Numsa targets Motsepe's R14.2bn
2.3 Fawu says seize AgriBEE ill-gotten gains
2.4 Ruling coalition’s newspaper may be given to readers free
2.5 'Shelving airbus deal probe bad'
2.6 Talks on labour broking wait for draft bill
2.7 Regulate, not ban, is sensible path taken by others
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1.1 NUM reports fatality at Gold Fields Kloof Mine
Business Report, 3 November 2009
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on Tuesday reported
a fatality at Gold Fields' Kloof Mine near Carletonville.
The trade union said the mineworker lost his life after being struck by a
snatch block while working the night shift.
"This brings to 145 the number of mineworkers who lost their lives in the
line of duty this year," said NUM.
"Contrary to what many argue, death in the industry remains a corporate norm
and those who hint that the figures are down may never have gone through the
pain of losing a loved one through deliberate acts of both ignorance and
negligence," the trade union said in a statement.
It called on the Department of Mineral Resources to order shaft closure and
called on its members to observe a day of mourning.
http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5229190&fSectionId=552&fSetId=662
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Getrude Makhafola, Sowetan, 2 November 2009
COSATU has given Sun International until today to fire the security company accused of insulting Nelson Mandela.
They have also called on institutions in the province who are doing business with Falcon Security to terminate such contracts.
The labour federation has also threatened to lobby 2010 World Cup tourists and Fifa officials not to stay at Sun City during next year’s soccer spectacle.
“We will not compromise when it comes to Nelson Mandela. We want Sun International to resolve this by Monday,” said Cosatu North West spokesperson Solly Phetoe.
Cosatu members marched on Sun City and delivered a memorandum to management on Saturday.
This comes after security boss Ben Burger was arrested after a remixed national anthem was played at a staff function last week.
The song was said to have ridiculed former president Nelson Mandela, calling him a “kaffir”.
Burger was charged with crimen injuria and is out on R1500 bail.
He is due to appear in court again at the end of the month.
The hotel’s security manager, Warren Alberts, was also suspended, while his colleague, Francois Roberts, was fired for actually playing the offensive CD. Another racist incident involved Marietta le Roux, who is accused of calling employee George Moapaletsela a “baboon”.
Moapaletsela told Sowetan that it started when Le Roux entered a room he was in at work earlier this year.
“She looked me in the eyes and said she could smell baboon. I was devastated,” Moapaletsela said.
He said he had laid a charge against Le Roux with human resources and the union.
Another employee, Kagiso Mafilika, said her two-year-old son was sprayed with cold water on a winter’s day by the resort’s emergency workers.
She said: “I had taken him to work that day because his nanny was sick. Later I heard him screaming outside. When I went to investigate, I found him trembling and soaked .”
Sun International director of resorts Kurt Peter said though Cosatu’s deadline was tight, they would engage the labour federation.
http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1084225
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1.4 Scrap contracts with Falcon Security - COSATU
Imraan Karolia, Eye-witness News, 3 November 2009
COSATU say it is canvassing in the North West province
to assure contracts with Falcon Security are scrapped immediately.
There was outrage last week, after one of the company’s employees
played the national anthem with lyrics referring to Nelson Mandela as the
‘k’ word at a Potjiekos competition.
More than a thousand people marched in Sun City at the weekend,
demanding they terminate the company’s security contract.
The union is waiting for a reply from Sun International.
“We have started to mobilize a scrapping of Falcon Security company in the North West province. They must dismiss the company as a matter of urgency because in our view it is them who are raising racism in Sun City,” said COSATU’s Solly Pheteo.
Falcon Security has been unavailable for comment.
http://www.eyewitnessnews.co.za/articleprog.aspx?id=25428
2 South Africa
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Amy Musgrave, Business Day, 3 November 2009
THE National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) is picking a fight with Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale, and yesterday called for his wealth to be nationalised.
This follows the Young Communist League labelling African National Congress treasurer Mathews Phosa as “a golden boy of imperial and white monopoly capital dominance” after Phosa told a London audience last Thursday that SA’s mines would not be nationalised.
The attacks are likely to worsen tension in the tripartite alliance and among ANC members on economic policy and ideology. Sexwale, with R1,162bn from his stakes in Mvelaphanda Group , is number 16 on the Sunday Times annual Rich List, which prompted yesterday’s comment.
Numsa criticised mainly black businessmen on the rich list. They included Lakshmi Mittal and Patrice Motsepe, the top two, Saki Macozoma and Phutuma Nhleko. Members of the Oppenheimer family were included. Numsa said it wanted the “nationalisation and eventually the socialisation” of their wealth.
Spokesman Castro Ngobese said yesterday the union, one of the most radical and powerful affiliates of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), would lobby the South African Communist Party (SACP) to adopt “progressive” resolutions at its special congress next month on nationalisation and the ever- widening gap between the rich and the poor.
The SACP is expected to take a hard line on this, especially as SA has overtaken Brazil as the most unequal society in the world.
Numsa has called for mines, banks, Sasol and ArcelorMittal to be nationalised. It says it believes that the Freedom Charter was never meant to reproduce or replace a white capitalist class with a black capitalist class or to “co-opt connected politicians to join exploiters”. “We are conscious of the fact that there has never been any transfer of wealth from the capitalists to the workers and the poor without any form of force or imposition,” Ngobese said.
The union called on the alliance secretariat to discuss privately owned wealth. An inability to do so would be auctioning the “revolution to the highest bidders in the market”.
Cosatu has said it is ready for future battles over economic policy, and has reiterated its opposition to businessmen occupying senior positions in the government. It says public representatives must choose between serving the country and business.
Ngobese said Numsa would also lobby other Cosatu affiliates to mount a “radical and militant campaign” against excessive, privately owned wealth and salaries, which were reproducing inequalities of the apartheid era.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=85792
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2.5 'Shelving airbus deal probe bad'
Carien Du Plessis, Political Bureau, Pretoria News, 2 November 2009
The DA has expressed
disappointment over a decision to put on ice a proposal for a parliamentary
probe to investigate the government's controversial R47-billion contract to buy
eight A400M Airbus military freight planes.
The Sunday Independent reported yesterday that the proposal for a multi-party
ad hoc committee to scrutinise the deal had been put on hold pending an
announcement by Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu as to whether the government
would go ahead or pull out of the 2005 agreement.
Sisulu is expected to make an announcement on Wednesday .
DA MP David Maynier said in a statement yesterday that there was, "if
anything, now a greater urgency to investigate this (matter), as new and murky
facts emerge about the deal..."
"What we need to know is how we got into such a high-risk procurement
programme without a tender process and against the recommendation of the
Defence Department in the first place."
He also wanted the involvement of colourful businessman Ivor Ichikowitz in the
deal examined. Ichikowitz, who bought BEE shares in Aerosud, was under
investigation some years ago after his Paramount Group allegedly flouted arms
control committee regulations.
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=6&art_id=vn20091102041529370C531642
2.6 Talks on labour broking wait for draft bill
Samantha Enslin-Payne, Business Report, 3 November 2009
Talks between the Labour
Department, the temporary employment services industry and unions at Nedlac
(the government, labour and business negotiating chamber) on labour broking
have been wrapped up until a draft bill is tabled next year.
This comes after four months of discussions on five principles that the
department submitted in a bid to reach some common ground.
John Botha, the chief operating officer of the Confederation of Associations in
the Private Employment Sector, which represents temporary employment services,
said yesterday: "We have not agreed to a helluva lot.
"But what has been agreed is that any legislative changes will apply to
both labour brokers and companies that want to employ temporary staff directly,
so that any form of potential abuse of temporary workers can be
addressed."
The debate on labour broking has been raging all year. Last week Jimmy Manyi,
the director-general in the department, said the practice would be banned.
Yesterday Mzobanzi Jikazana, the spokesman for the Minister of Labour, said:
"Those that operate within the law have nothing to worry about."
Botha said the department made it clear the entire industry would not be
banned. At the most, the department is looking
at certain sectors such as agriculture and the domestic sector.
But Cosatu does not back this softer approach. Patrick Craven, the spokesman
for Cosatu, said the federation was not against temporary employment as such,
but wanted all forms of employment where people were employed via a third party
to be outlawed.
"Greater regulation of this industry will not satisfy Cosatu, but we will
have to see what the bill says," he said.
The five principles discussed at Nedlac were regulation, employer obligations,
the enhancement of dismissal rights, equal pay for equal work, and
organisational rights that would make it easier for temporary workers to join a
union.
Botha said the issue of equal pay was a very broad area, which "we have
not got to the bottom of".
The industry has recognised the issue of vulnerable workers. But the definition
of who is a vulnerable worker has not been agreed. "We consider the level
of skills to be a better determinant of vulnerability."
http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=561&fArticleId=5228595
2.7 Regulate, not ban, is sensible path taken by others
Dennis George, Business Report, 3 November 2009
Outsourcing, sub-contracting and
the use of labour brokers has severely undermined the quality of employment in
South Africa. The growth of these practices of so-called non-standard
employment has a particular resonance here, where the idea of standard
employment was never well-grounded in the first place.
A study by the Department of Labour has revealed that the number and scope of
operations of temporary employment agencies or labour brokers have grown
rapidly since 1994. More than 500 000 placements are now made daily, and it is
estimated that the temporary employment services (TES) industry employs 4
percent of the total workforce in a business that generates R23 billion a year.
Given these facts, it is little wonder that we in the labour movement have been
demanding action to protect the rights and interests of workers. It is an
ongoing battle and one that saw the Federation of Unions of SA (Fedusa) again
raise the matter at our congress in November last year.
The ANC election manifesto this year also called for laws to be introduced to
address the problems of temporary employment and to prohibit abusive labour
practices while Cosatu's latest congress called for a total ban on the TES
industry.
The DA and Cope have also weighed in with a position paper calling for the
industry to be reformed. These debates are essential, but sight should also not
be lost of the fact that South Africa is not the only country faced with the
undermining of the quality of employment by employers and where struggles have
been waged and steps taken to improve matters.
For example, the EU directive on temporary agency work, adopted in June last
year, introduced the principle of equal treatment for agency workers from the
first day of their assignment.
The European Trade Union Confederation welcomed the vote in the European
Parliament because it ensured that social partners now have a major role to
play in protecting agency workers.
This seems a sensible approach and one that Fedusa endorses. We feel that the
TES industry should be strictly regulated by the social partners, by the
government, business and organised labour.
Strict and closely monitored regulation can address most aspects of
"decent" work and should ensure that unscrupulous brokers will be
exposed and eventually be forced out of the industry. While we obviously have
to adapt regulations to local conditions, there is no need for us to reinvent the
wheel. There are a number of examples we can draw on.
The "ABU" Agreement in the Netherlands, for example, covers some 90
percent of TES workers, and provides a good model. Another fine example is the
national level agreement concluded in Britain in May last year between the
government, the Trade Union Council and the employer body, the Confederation of
British Industry.
But Fedusa is also encouraging the government to ratify the International
Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 181, covering the TES industry. This
convention, as with the other regulatory regimes mentioned, recognises the role
employment agencies may play in a "well-functioning labour market"
and the need "to protect workers against abuses".
To this end, Leon Grobler, Fedusa's representative at Nedlac, attended an ILO
workshop in Geneva last week on the ratification of Convention 181.
Adoption by the government of this convention could be the first step towards a
regulatory regime that could promote skills development and decent work for all
while preventing human trafficking and other abusive practices.
The convention was drafted in 1997 and has now been ratified by 21 countries,
ranging from Albania to Uruguay. Three African countries - Algeria, Ethiopia
and Morocco - have so far adopted it, Ethiopia and Morocco having done so in
1999, with Algeria following suit in 2006.
Within the broad framework of the ILO convention, we must draw up our domestic
regulations. We can do so either by national legislation supplemented by
collective agreements or by a national framework agreement supplemented by
sectoral or industry-wide agreements.
But no matter which route we choose, the real issue - as it is now with
existing labour laws - will not be regulation alone, but enforcement. This must
be two-fold, covering both administrative aspects such as registration and
licensing, and conditions in the workplace, such as hours of work and period of
placements.
Administrative regulation could be dealt with through a statutory and
tripartite regulatory body along the lines of a university council of the
governing body of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.
Applying regulations within workplaces is more complex, but can be managed
through a very broad legal framework supplemented by collective agreements
between the social partners.
But we should be aware that most of the problems that we are currently dealing
with were identified and comprehensively analysed in reports of the European
Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound),
especially the report on "Temporary Agency Work and Collective Bargaining
in the EU". This body was set up by the EU in 1975 in order to contribute
to the planning and design of "better living and working conditions"
in Europe.
Obviously, no European model can or should be imported into South Africa
without proper consideration and adequate prior consultation with all affected
parties. Quite apart from anything else, the countries of the EU tend to have
far superior systems of social security and other state benefits, from which we
could also probably learn.
However, the issues dealt with in the EU parallel those of our own regarding
the TES industry and we would be remiss not to learn from the best practices
already applied anywhere we find them.
Fedusa therefore feels it best to encourage improved efficiency in the national
labour market while ensuring that abuses are removed and that decent pay and
conditions should apply to every worker. On this basis, we think it is better to
promote co-operation between public and private employment services in various
fields - and we cannot afford to procrastinate.
Dennis George is the general secretary of the Federation of Unions of SA
http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5228569
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Anna Majavu, Sowetan, 3 November 2009
THE SACP in the Western Cape has challenged former ANC leaders Mcebisi Skwatsha and Max Ozinsky to lay charges of crimen injuria against Western Cape Premier Helen Zille.
This after Zille claimed in the provincial legislature two weeks ago that the two leaked information to her when they were still ANC provincial chairperson and deputy secretary.
The DA is said to have used the information to attack projects started by then Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool . Skwatsha has denied the allegations.
But the SACP is not satisfied with his denial alone and says Skwatsha and Ozinsky must lay charges against Zille to prove that she is lying.
SACP provincial secretary Khaya Magaxa said yesterday Skwatsha’s “denial alone cannot be enough”.
http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1084480
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