JOHANNESBURG – The future looks scary in the mining industry, former National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) general secretary Frans Baleni said on Thursday.

“The mining industry is in ICU [Intensive Care Unit], commodity (prices) are low. It will takes three to five years to recover. The future looks scary,” he said.

He said when he joined the mining industry in the 1980s, there was an 800 000-strong mining workforce in the industry.

“Today the workforce is around 400 000 and with mechanisation in the industry, the workforce will be reduced further,” he said.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Congress of the South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) elective congress in Midrand, Baleni said the energy sector was growing, especially in renewable energy.

Baleni, who was the guest of Cosatu, said he was relaxing at home after serving the NUM for 16 years.

“I am at home relaxing…the job was stressful,” he joked.

Baleni was replaced by David Sipunzi as the general secretary of the NUM at the union’s 15th national congress in June.

He admitted that he was worried on the first day of the congress. “I was worried, I realised comrades were focusing on internal conflicts. I was worried the focus was not on the burning issues that confront the workers. We do not have time and any time we got we must use it to debate issues confronting workers, such as poverty, unemployment and inequalities.”

The congress started acrimoniously on Monday, after the Food and Allied Workers Union (Fawu) rejected the credentials.

Fawu rejected the adoption of the congress credentials, which included the Liberated Metalworkers Union of South Africa (Limusa) as an affiliate and second deputy president Zingiswa Losi as a national office bearer.

The union maintained that Losi went to the national office as a shop steward of the now expelled National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa). She resigned at her place of employment and became a member of the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) and as such she was supposed to have vacated her position at the national office, the union had argued.

Fawu suggested that Losi and Limusa should be observers only at the congress.

However, the credentials were eventually adopted by majority vote after it was put to a vote.

Baleni said after the first day he was impressed with the debate and the resolutions.

He advised Cosatu to extend an invitation to the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu) and the Federation of Unions of South Africa ( Fedusa) to join hands.

“I advise Cosatu to also invite those who have left to come back. We need to confront the employer in a united form,” he said without mentioning names.

Numsa was expelled from Cosatu in November last year, after the union resolved at its special national congress not to support the African National Congress in the 2014 election and called on Cosatu to move out of the alliance with the ANC and the South African Communist Party.