Building employer and union ties
Trust and an open relationship between negotiating parties are indispensable, writes Abey Kgotle
It is not always widely appreciated that satisfactory wage agreements do not just happen, that they are not simply achieved in short bouts of round-table discussions. Mutually satisfactory outcomes cannot be achieved — as those reached in 2016 between Lonmin and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) have shown — unless there is an open relationship between the negotiating parties — employers and employees. Such a relationship did not and, realistically, could not exist at the time of the previous wage negotiations in 2013 – negotiations that were only concluded after a five-month strike that damaged the platinum industry in the first half of 2014 severely. There has been a global groundswell of disenchantment with establishment structures, and this has manifested itself in SA’s mining sector in employees having turned away from their longer-term representatives to others with newer ideas. Achieving these objectives called then for progressive interactions with...
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