The crude mining profiteers are solely responsible for the crisis in the mining sector
The ongoing job losses in the mining industry have exposed the state’s failure to restructure the mining industry and the national economy at large. The rapacious mining companies have failed to demonstrate corporate social responsibility. COSATU strongly denounces the selfishness, voracious greed and exploitative attitudes of the mining firms and bosses.
The only restructuring that they care about is the one of cost cutting, increased productivity , mine rationalization and scaling down.
They have proven it very clear that they do not value the lives of black workers and black people in general. They have not failed but have flatly refused to stop oppression, poverty, insecurity and racism directed at the black workers. They do not pay living wages and are not prepared to provide workers with adequate housing training and opportunities for promotion.
What they have resorted to doing recently is to sow seeds off divisions amongst workers by isolating the NUM and using AMCU to manage workers. The juvenile stunt that was pulled by both AMCU and the Lilly Mine management to try and stop COSATU from visiting the mine is a case in point. The fact that Mr Mathunjwa was used to justify the recklessness and failure of Lilly mine to protect workers ,proves how deep he is in the pockets of these mining companies.
The Lilly mine management should take full responsibility for the mine accident that happened in Mpumalanga. Their carelessness that has been camouflaged under their public relations stunts and sanctimonious hypocrisy can only fool the gullible. They need to shoulder full responsibility and be held accountable for exposing workers to such elements that three workers have still not been rescued. But the entire mining industry should answer on this tragic incident because they pulled all the stops , when the workers in Chile were trapped underground , yet their selfish and narrow interests have not allowed them to act in unison and on time on the Lilly Mine incident.
The scheming and rapacious mining bosses have dragged the mining industry down the drain because of their mismanagement, short-sightedness and narrow focus on their profits. The current crisis in the mining sector is a crisis of profits by the mining companies.
The ongoing retrenchments do not have a human face, because the mining bosses do not care about workers but about the profits. The sooner our government intervenes the better. Mining firms do not provide any job-seeking assistance to retrenched miners and do not even attempt to sponsor some income generating projects for communities that are affected by these retrenchments.
COSATU demands that government forces the mining industry to ensure that there is an industry wide training and retraining scheme that will help miners to posses’ useful skills rather than simply being dumped in the unemployment line.
Government needs to also hold accountable these crude profiteers in the mining industry, who simply leave entire communities devastated when the minerals become difficult to extract or run out. They do not do any cleanup behind and abandon the valuable infrastructure to rot, resulting in massive wastage.
COSATU still insist that government should stop watching from a distance and should start to playing a more interventionist and decisive role in the economy. The resistance to a jobs summit by both state and big business is very troubling. Big business prefers to engage at a workplace level because they do not want to be forced by a national decision to comply. They violate workplace decisions and undermine any consensus and understanding they might have reached with labour at will.
The status quo needs to be changed urgently and if left unchanged, the scandalous and immoral behavior of the mining bosses will continue unabated. The federation will not rest while the mining profiteers are still running amok and treating this country as their colony for exploitation.
Statement issued by COSATU, 19 February 2016
