The Star reports that with labour organising ground shifting, rendering some unions almost obsolete, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has embarked on a process to re-align certain of its affiliates.
As a result, the federation has decided to merge the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) with the Liberated Metalworkers Union of SA (Limusa). The merger will be finalised at NUM’s special congress, which starts on Wednesday in Durban.
Limusa was founded in November 2014, and in March 2015 it became a Cosatu affiliate to replace Numsa (the National Union of Metalworkers of SA), which was expelled from the federation in November 2014. It was led by the late Cedric Gina, a former president of Numsa.
Livhuwani Mammburu, NUM’s national spokesperson, said the special congress was convened to finalise the work of its national congress. Among its major tasks are issues pertaining to constitutional amendments that include the merger.
“One of the amendments is the merger of NUM with Limusa, as resolved by Cosatu,” Mammburu said.
Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said the merger was one of the many standing resolutions of the federation.
He said there was a proposal to merge the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) with the SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu), and there was also a proposal to merge NUM with Limusa.
“Limusa was a special project which was relevant at a particular time… The politics of the time necessitated that we have Limusa,” Pamla said.
“Now Limusa competes in the sector with Numsa. Numsa on its own is no longer a metalworkers’ union per se, it is a general union because it has realised that to survive it needs to get out of the metal sector and explore mining and other areas. So, as a way of responding to these economic changes, the central executive committee of November 2018 took a decision that NUM and Limusa should merge,” he added.
Pamla said Cosatu always maintained it needed a few, but stronger unions, hence the re-alignment. He admitted retrenchments had dealt blows to some unions, with the result that they were struggling to survive.
Independent political analyst Thabani Khumalo said the mergers were long overdue because many unions were “fishing from the same pond”, rendering them ineffective in the face of radical unions, such as Amcu and Numsa, which were organised in most sectors.
The original of the above report by Sihle Mavuso appeared on page 7 of The Star of 3 September 2019
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