Weekend Economists Revelations and Reviews April 26-28, 2013

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35. South Africa’s Mines Union to Ask for Double-Digit Pay Increase

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-28/south-africa-s-mines-union-to-ask-for-double-digit-pay-increase.html

The National Union of Mineworkers, an ally of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress, said it will ask for a double-digit increase in pay when negotiating with the Chamber of Mines in May.

“Demands to the Chamber of Mines will be delivered two weeks from now and the NUM will demand a double-digit pay increase as well as significant improvement in conditions of service,” the union said in an e-mailed statement today.

With industrywide wage talks looming, tensions between labor groups are intensifying. Lonmin Plc (LON) ended a six-week strike at Marikana last year by agreeing to pay increases for workers of 11 percent to 22 percent. South African mining companies that employ the NUM’s two top leaders should no longer have to pay their union-related salaries, the Chamber of Mines said last week.

The union was founded in 1982 by workers including Cyril Ramaphosa, who went on to lead the biggest-ever strike in the country’s gold industry five years later and is now the richest black South African after Patrice Motsepe, according to the Johannesburg-based Sunday Times. The NUM vies with the National Union of Metalworkers to be the biggest in the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which has been in alliance with the ANC since the first all-race elections in 1994.