The South African Labor Court in Johannesburg has granted Gold Fields a court order temporarily prohibiting a planned strike at the company’s South Deep mine. The South African National Union of Mineworkers called for the mine’s 6,000 workers to strike to protest racism. “Our main complaint is that the senior and top executive managers are mainly whites,” said union spokesperson Lesiba Sheshoka. (Reuters, Oct. 26)
While formal political apartheid has ended, there is still economic apartheid in South Africa. Only 8.9 percent of the nation’s mines were owned by Blacks in 2009 even though affirmative action policies have been in place for over a decade. The company stated that the union cannot strike over what it considers to be “management issues.”
It is not the first time the court has come down on the side of the bosses. Earlier this year, the government obtained a Labor Court edict preventing health care workers from participating in a massive public-sector worker strike.
