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After a full month’s negotiations between organised labour and management, during which the services of two CCMA facilitators were engaged, Anglo Platinum senior management signed an unlawful agreement with AMCU, completely excluding UASA and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The agreement flies in the face of the rights that both UASA and NUM enjoy as equal partners in terms of the Employment Relations Agreement (“ERA”) which binds Anglo Platinum, UASA, NUM and AMCU.

UASA had made separate and more substantial proposals to management during the course of wage/salary negotiations. Notwithstanding the fact that UASA were engaging in good faith in the collective bargaining process with Anglo Platinum management and other trade unions, management appear to have seen fit to fraudulently take control of this collective bargaining process and to secretly negotiate and sign an unlawful agreement.

UASA and NUM have jointly placed Anglo Platinum on terms to comply with the ERA, failing which urgent court action shall follow. The unlawfully concluded agreement between AMCU and Anglo Platinum is void and NUM and UASA should be permitted to continue with the annual wage/salary negotiations with Anglo Platinum in compliance with ERA.

It is clear to UASA that both Anglo Platinum and AMCU have flouted the rule of law by the devious conclusion of this unlawful agreement. Orderly industrial relations are paramount to the economic stability of our economy. It is simply untenable that a blue-chip multinational corporation like Anglo Platinum has seen fit to ignore its duty to bargain with UASA and NUM.

Issued by UASA