BMWU accuses mining companies
Lebogang Mosikare | Monday July 10, 2023 06:00
Giving a presidential address during the general council of BMWU in Palapye recently, the union’s president Joseph Tsimako said multinational companies are part of the problems bedevilling the industry in Botswana.
“The problem starts with their compositions or governance structure. Firstly, they hire expatriates who lack the necessary skills and qualifications to run the mining operations overlooking qualified locals.
Government assists them in violating the country and the industry’s localisation policies. When they do hire locals, they are far from making decisions, to the extent that administrative decisions, even during negotiations, are controlled from outside the country,” he bemoaned.
Tsimako also cried out that negotiations with the transnational companies take a long time to conclude because the power and control of these companies come from outside the country. “Secondly, these multinational companies, with support from government, have resorted to outsourcing of their operations to subcontracting companies.
They apply for the mining licence and then outsource their workforce to a services company, as part of their plan to escape accountability from the union over the violations of their employee’s labour rights. They give employees fixed term contracts and not permanent contracts such that when the union comes to organise, they terminate their employment contracts and defeat our ability to organise workers and recruit them. Most of the issues the union battles with come from subcontractors.
They have no respect for the union or workers rights,” said Tsimako. This model of operation which is common across all the big and small companies, Tsimako underscored, is a threat to collective bargaining and trade unionism in the country. “We are also seeing that many companies are going underground, with new technologies being brought in to sustain these new mining operations.
Our members are going to be replaced by digitisation. As it stands, retrenchments are on a rise due to company optimisation and restructuring. Labour laws are powerless against these processes. Unlike the public sector, private sector employees are at the mercy of employers. We have called on the mining industry to include the union in its programme of mining design and planning stages, so that the union can assess the extent of their human capital development programmes to provide training, re-skilling and re-tooling opportunities. This could be done through the revision of the Mines and Minerals Act, to incorporate social labour plans, as mandatory conditions for acquisition of mineral rights in Botswana.
These can be monitored by the union to ensure that as the sector transitions, workers who are to lose jobs can acquire transferable or portable skills that can be used in other sectors,” Tsimako stated. Tsimako also told the council that he recently participated in the Industrial mid-term conference in Cape Town, South Africa, where it was resolved that IndustriALL must work with affiliates in fighting capitalistic policies used by multinational companies to suppress trade unionism.
“Issues such as hours of work and exemptions given to companies to work beyond the legally permitted hours of work, safety and health within operations and enforcement and applications of International Labour Orgainsation (ILO) Standards, social dialogue at shopfloor, national and international level through collective bargaining and participation in decision making forums were encouraged. Other issues related to women’s rights and sexual harassment in the workplace,” he said.
Tsimako also called for the reviving of the spirit of militancy by union members in the country’s mining industry. “Comrades, the union can take matters to court as we did with the likes of Lucara Botswana and now Khoemacau Copper Mine.
However, not all our cases can be won at Court. We need to bring back the spirit of militancy by demonstrating, petitioning, cause a total disruption in the sector to show the power of the working class. Our voices through our advocacy must be felt by the man on the street to the man sitting at the highest office in the land. Comrades let our voices be heard at the VDCs, Kgotla meetings, Council Chambers, Members of Parliament’s Office. District Commissioner’s Office, National Assembly, radio, television and the Office of the President (OP). Workers issues must be heard no matter what,” Tsimako implored. He also stressed the need for the strengthening of BMWU’s structures from the bottom to the top hierarchy. “Comrades, let us strengthen our grass roots movement, right from the rank-and-file members, to shop stewards at the shop floor level who are the union’s first line of defence, our branch committee members at operations management level, and the National Executive Committee (NEC) at national level. Let us engage our officials in the secretariat to develop policies and design strategies for implementing our programs, position papers that we can use in our advocacy to protect our members and influence the mining industry. We must demand the establishment of the mining bargaining council, for industry safety committee to be established.
We must exert our power and influence in the mining industry from here going forward. We owe that to our members and workers in general,” Tsimako emphasised. Explaining why BMWU is upping the ante on the creation of the mining bargaining council, Tsimako stated that the bargaining council will be the body through which the union and mining companies will use to conclude and enforce collective agreements about terms and conditions of employment or other matters of mutual interest. “We have approached the government through the ministry of minerals and energy and Botswana Chamber of Mines (BCM) and we have got their buy-in. We are only left with approaching the mining companies through the BCM. Through the bargaining council, we will advocate that people who are hired to head foreign mining entities in Botswana are given more powers to take major decisions on behalf of their foreign owners in order to expedite our negotiations and issues of mutual interest with these companies,” said Tsimako.