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For all his initial enthusiasm, Minister of Mineral Resources Ngoako Ramathlodi's attempts to resolve the platinum strike met the same fate as those of the CCMA, the minister of labour and the Labour Court. The parties downing tools rejected the minister's proposal...
Bureaucracy is defined as management or administration marked by hierarchical authority among numerous offices and by fixed procedures. The abuse of power by officials is a very old phenomenon in the labour movement worldwide. Bureaucratisation is seen in this article...
The formation of a workers' committee is an act of power by the working class. It has shaken capital by advancing far beyond trade union bureaucracy. The workers' committee in Lonmin had only been in existence for a week when the Marikana massacre took place on the 16...
Michael Moseki, an elected strike leader at Samancor Western Chrome Mine, sits inside his tin shack and talks about the challenges of raising his five children on R4,700 a month. Just like other mine workers, strike leaders at various mines in the North West province...
Whether the aftermath of Marikana will spell the downright end of the National Union of Mineworkers, the resentment against the traditional structures of bargaining and the union leadership is palpable in the platinum belt, sometimes bordering on murderous anger. The...
My name is Tibugo, I'm one of the strike committee leaders at Anglo American in Rustenburg. I work as a PTV (personnel transport vehicle operator) at Amplats, I do mostly pipe work. Sometimes I clean the tunnels. It's extremely labor intensive. I've been here for a...
Amandla (A!): Some labour experts insist that the platinum mines, which you call the wealthiest in the world, cannot accede to miners' wage demands and pay for corporations' social responsibility to affected communities. To what extent is labour broking affecting...
In July 1981, 1,700 workers at the Penge asbestos mine in the Northwestern Transvaal struck after a bitter, two year struggle for recognition by the Black Allied Mine and Construction Workers Union. After four days, the mine owners fired all of the workers, who then...
The shooting at Lonmin's Marikana mine exposes weaknesses at the heart of South African society The story of the London-listed Lonmin's Marikana mine shootings is that of a trade union that cosied up to big business; of an upstart and populist new union that exploited...