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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 the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), which was expelled from the federation in November 2014. Limusa was led by the late Cedric Gina, a former president of Numsa. Livhuwani Mammburu, NUM spokesperson, said the special congress was convened to finalise the work of its national congress and among its major tasks would be issues pertaining to constitutional amendments, including the merger. Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said the merger was one of the many standing resolutions of the federation. He indicated there was a proposal to merge the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) with the SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu), in addition to the proposal to merge NUM with Limusa. 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.
- Read more of the above report by Sihle Mavuso at SA Labour News
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page