Centre for the Study of Democracy director Professor Steven Friedman believes the prevailing view that a possible expulsion of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) would lead to “a Cosatu minus a metalworkers union and a metal union minus Cosatu” to be “highly unlikely”.

Instead, Cosatu, which would find it untenable to continue as a federation in the absence of a metalworkers union, would most likely establish a new union that would “attempt to take Numsa members and keep them within Cosatu”.

Speaking at a discussion hosted by the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa on Friday, he said it was impossible to forecast how many of Numsa’s 340 000 members might be prepared to make the move, but that some form of “metalworkers union within Cosatu” was foreseeable.

“However, what may also happen is that, within all the Cosatu unions, you could have sections leaving their union [to join the Numsa-led structure].”

Friedman also argued that, even if Numsa was not expelled on November 7, when Cosatu’s central executive committee was expected to decide Numsa’s fate, member poaching between Numsa and Cosatu affiliates could continue at a less visible level.

“It’s a matter of degrees,” the political analyst asserted, arguing that Numsa’s decision to organise along value chains rather than sectoral lines opened the way for workers to move between unions.

In the short term, this competition was likely to lead to greater “turbulence” in industries such as the steel and engineering sector, where higher demands, along with a more difficult collective-bargaining phase, could be anticipated.

However, in the longer run, the development could be positive for the labour relations environment, because it would force the competing unions to become far more attuned to the needs and desires of their members than was currently the case.

A more responsive and accountable leadership would be a “tougher” bargaining-table interlocutor, but it would also be in a better position to ensure that members abided by agreements.

“I would argue that a more difficult life at the bargaining table is a very small price to pay if the consequence of that is that agreements stick and you do not have the kind of turbulence that we very often have when agreements don’t stick.”