Today, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) has successfully suspended the flawed process of verifying union membership at Sibanye-Stillwater’s gold operations, aimed at rendering the current strike action unprotected.  The Union filed papers with the Labour Court to appeal an error contained in the Labour Court judgment, which would have severely limited the scope of the verification.  AMCU believes that the outcome of the verification will be in their favour – proving their true power.

The verification process as ordered by the Labour Court has been suspended, pending the outcome of AMCU’s application for leave to appeal a paragraph of the Labour Court judgment. 

This comes as a result of an urgent application for leave to appeal lodged by AMCU earlier this morning.  The basis of the appeal is to remedy a factual error in the wording of the judgment.  AMCU argues that the Judge erred by stating that the membership figures as at 22 November 2018 were common cause, while in fact AMCU explicitly disputed this in their Court papers.  The significance of this error is that it might limit the scope of the verification process, and therefore seriously prejudice members’ constitutional right to strike.  This means that the strike remains protected in terms of the Labour Relations Act.

The verification is a secondary process following a devious strategy of Sibanye-Stillwater to team up with AMCU’s main opposition, namely the mostly black National Union Mineworkers (NUM) as well as the two minority, traditionally white unions, Solidarity and UASA, to extend the wage agreement.  Section 23 of the LRA allows a majority union, or a group of unions together forming the majority at a particular workplace, to agree with an employer to extend a collective agreement to other parties.  In this case, Sibanye-Stillwater used various underhanded tactics such as parading employees and coercing them to join other unions, to try and decrease AMCU’s membership. 

On 13 December 2018, Sibanye-Stillwater issued a notice to AMCU claiming that the Union had fallen below a particular percentage, and therefore NUM, UASA and Solidarity together formed a majority, providing neither substantiating figures nor documents.  AMCU immediately opposed it in writing, and subsequently Sibanye-Stillwater approached the Labour Court on an urgent basis to enforce the extension.  In AMCU’s answering affidavit, Advocate Paul Kennedy (Senior Council) cited several arguments to cast “serious doubt” on the figures alleged by Sibanye-Stillwater.  Subsequently, on 21 December 2018, Judge Edwin Thlothlalemaje found in AMCU’s favour, stating that the figures provided by Sibanye-Stillwater were indeed subject to “serious doubt”.  He subsequently set the application aside, and ordered the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) to perform a membership verification at the workplace. 

However, at the first sitting of the verification process on 3 January 2019, Sibanye-Stillwater’s lawyers argued that the scope of the verification must be limited to the approximately 0,05% of employees who allegedly crossed the floor between 22 November 2018 and 13 December 2018.  AMCU opposed this, and therefore the CCMA requested clarity from the Labour Court on the interpretation of the order.

On 8 January 2019 Judge Thlothlalemaje responded, unfortunately repeating the error by finding in favour of the interpretation of the mine – that the scope of the verification should be limited.  This compelled AMCU to appeal the order.  The verification will now be suspended pending the outcome of AMCU’s appeal.

As AMCU we are confident that our appeal will succeed, and that the Sibanye-Stillwater will be forced to be honest about our membership at their mines.  For the first time in years, we will show that AMCU is the strongest union in gold.

 

Issued by AMCU