Bad moon rises on battered mineworkers
Mbongeni Mguni | Friday October 2, 2015 13:52
When the global recession reached local shores in the summer of 2008, it resulted in industry-wide work suspensions and closures within months, cut 1,000 mining jobs in six months and by the end of 2009, had shrunk the economy by nearly eight percent.
In 2009, mineworkers’ colleagues in the then fledgling diamond cutting and polishing sector saw 689 of their ‘comrades’ bite the dust, as firms cut costs in light of reduced throughput from the Diamond Trading Centre Botswana (DTCB), the cost of excess capacity and constrictive credit obligations to banks.
The darkness lifted from those years, as mines reopened, new operations began and the mammoth Cut 8 project gathered pace. For those outside of the mines, matters appeared to have normalised in the economically critical sector.
In the years since the recession, Ghaghoo and Karowe mines have opened, while the mothballed Lerala Diamond mine has been sold and is due to open next year.
The country is also looking forward to its first uranium mine.
It was thus a surprise for many to discover at last week’s Botswana Mine Workers Union (BMWU) congress that 1,265 miners actually lost their jobs between 2011 and September 2015, the period when matters ‘normalised’.
These lost jobs include the 822 souls bused out of Boseto Mine and onto the swollen ranks of the unemployed at midnight on February 27 as the Australian developer ran into insolvency.
Even as they head for their annual shutdown, mineworkers are fully aware that the bad moon is reaching towards its zenith.
Besides Boseto, low base metal prices have also critically affected BCL Mine, where reports have emerged of financial distress, low employee morale and operational uncertainty.
Tati Nickel’s operations are almost certainly equally distressed as the operation, now majority owned by BCL Mine, is a few years away from end of life and only encountering poor grade material.
The diamond sector, as is traditional, has been the loudest about the global downturn in commodity prices, with managers and unionists alike sounding warnings about poor sales, reduced production and the threat of interventions such as rationalisations and even job cuts.
“Our industry is going through difficult times,” Debswana MD, Balisi Bonyongo told mineworkers at the congress last week.
“In the past year, there has been a sharp decline in global commodity prices. We have little control over the global economy and our greatest challenge is how to remain competitive in these challenging times.
“Our industry will not survive this time unless we are efficient in both production and costs.”
As Bonyongo spoke, the 200 or so mineworkers cramped into a Tlokweng conference centre carefully watched his lips. With the traumatic experience of 2009, mineworkers were keen to spot certain phrases and technospeak that managers infuse into their speech to euphemise job cuts or wage disruptions.
In 2009, phrases such as ‘Project North Star’ and ‘Operational Review’ belied plans by Debswana to cut 601 jobs across operations, while ‘outsourcing’ at least another 671 ‘roles’.
This time around, however, Bonyongo used no menacing phrases. In fact, in carefully phrased sentences, he appeared to offer hope that there would be no major job cuts associated with this year’s bad moon.
“At Debswana we are managing the situation so that we don’t cause anything that becomes a problem for us when the upturn comes,” he said.
“Our workers are here and we are tackling the slow down with prudence, care and vigour. We must not lose sight of the fact that there will be a recovery and we must prepare for the eventual upturn.”
The 500 or so workers at DTCB, however, may not be so lucky. According to Thatayaone Tauyakgale, the Botswana Federation of Trade Union’s national treasurer and a former high-ranking Botswana Diamond Workers’ Union executive, a change is already in the wind.
“We have been informed by management about the possibility of job losses because of the slow down. In July, management conducted their forecasts for the second half of the year looking at intentions to offer and told workers that demand is expected to drop and buyers are not coming through.
“We expect voluntary separation and for those left behind, restructuring,” he said.
According to Tauyakgale, workers expect communication on the job loss numbers and counselling is also due to start soon for all staff.
For mineworkers union president, Jack Tlhagale, the current threats against mining and workers point to two difficulties the labour movement is presently wrestling against.
The first is the proliferation of contract mining, where the union claims contractors do not provide any form of basic job security or the rights associated with full time work.
Of the 1,265 jobs lost between 2011 and 2015, Tlhagale points out that most of these were the result of workers being thrown into the wind at the end of each contract cycle.
The BMWU estimates that up to 20 percent of the 11,000 mineworkers in the country are employed by mining contractors and the numbers are growing.
For mines, the growing popularity of using mining contractors is their comparatively lower costs and flexibility, which is linked to the contractors’ ability to grow and shrink their labour within short spaces of time.
“It is the biggest issue,” Tlhagale says in an interview during a congress recess.
“The type of employment going on with contractors and sub-contractors is temporary in nature and that type is such that you cannot plan long-term. You cannot go to the bank and say I need a loan or a mortgage.
“Your scope is limited and it’s short-term employment.
Batswana are working like expatriates because there are no plans guaranteeing them permanent employment.
“There’s no reason these contracts should be so short because the mining is done on a continuous basis. Everytime the contract with the mine elapses, the contractor retrenches everyone and rehires workers.
“This is not fair to Batswana.”
He points to a contractor engaged in Jwaneng that allegedly retrenched workers at the end of its contract, then subsequently won another contract near Maun. “They went in like a new company. They recruited as if they had never known their previous workers”.
According to Tlhagale, it has become a tradition in Botswana that retrenchments in the mining sector are not an issue due to lax laws and provisions that favour employers.
Tlhagale, who won a further term at the BMWU’s helm over the weekend, believes it is far too easy for mines and contractors to axe workers without fair retrenchment packages or conditions.
“The law provides for companies to simply say ‘we are closing for this economic reason or the other,’ and they don’t have to respect any work contract.
“Once you are retrenched, you are a nobody. You start scratching the market for anything,” he says.
The other difficulty exposed by the current downturn is the lack of a tripartite forum with mines, mineworkers and government. The absence of such a forum, according to Tlhagale, means mineworkers are going into the slow down blindfolded.
“We don’t know what will happen. There’s no forum or tripartite structure where mines, government and mineworkers share information.
“When the mines plan and say, ‘there’s a drop here or there,’ it’s them who know and there’s no requirement under law for them to engage workers on time to say, these are the options. For us, it’s all guesswork,” Tlhagale says wistfully.
As they prepare for their annual shutdowns, mineworkers cannot absolutely be sure of what the New Year will bring. In the 2009 recession, the big firms’ managers were willing to discuss remedial measures and minimise job losses.
For the smaller firms and the workers at mining contractors, the threatening shadows cast by the bad moon are growing ever longer.