Manuel lashes unions for 'race to bottom'

Outgoing Planning Minister Trevor Manuel has criticised the short-sighted way in which some trade unions approach negotiations, saying it has sparked a "race to the bottom".

This is Manuel's sternest criticism yet of the ructions in the labour movement, which have seen the upstart Amcu grab a majority of workers in the platinum industry, edging out the ANC's alliance partner, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Manuel himself felt the heat after Numsa's Irvin Jim dubbed his department's new blueprint for growth, the National Development Plan (NDP) a "right-wing document".

In an interview this week, Manuel said Jim was "speaking a lot of rubbish".

This week, South Africa's longest-serving finance minister flagged competition between unions as self-destructive. "The divisions in the unions are very destructive, not only for the voice of workers, but also as new unions arise they want their pound of flesh. So they make demands, and this competition for membership actually introduces a race to the bottom," he said.

Amcu has lured members by making promises to workers that are unlikely to be agreed on by their mining bosses - such as the R12500 a month minimum pay.

Manuel said Amcu's R12500 pay demand created a "difficult situation", although he conceded that the NUM "no longer represents those workers".

The platinum industry stands on a precipice as miners have been on strike since January, leading to the mines losing more than R7.7-billion in revenue and workers sitting at home without pay.

"It actually serves the interests of employers not to have people at work and not to have to pay. It's a destructive kind of energy now," he said.

One of the consequences of this inter-union rivalry, Manuel argued, is that it has contributed to the "broken compact" between companies and unions, which worked well in the early 1990s before falling apart.

Although Nedlac was created to be a forum for unions, government and labour to thrash out differences, this has not resolved the issue.

Manuel said the unions "took a negotiating, rather than a dialogue posture" on talks at Nedlac, which created a far more confrontational environment. "It became very difficult and very contested ... what you [got] are a set of very pyrrhic victories for the unions."

One of the key concerns of Manuel's NDP is how to resolve the fact that so many South Africans are out of work - especially the youth.

This has led some organisations, such as the Free Market Foundation, to argue that special measures be enforced to introduce greater flexibility into the labour market. Unsurprisingly, these proposals have been opposed by the unions, who feel it would open the way to create poor-quality jobs.

"We have to expand employment opportunities. When unions say we oppose creation of special measures to deal with this problem, I look at them and say what are the workers whose children are unemployed saying," Manuel said.