Violence during the latest strike in the steel industry has led to new calls by employers for changes to labour law and better law enforcement.
The wage strike by thousands of members of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) is now in its third week, and has led to damage to property and intimidation. At least two people have died.
Jonathan Goldberg, CEO of Global Business Solutions and an authority on labour, tells the FM: "There is violence in most big strikes today because of the lack of law enforcement. Employers have little defence against violence and intimidation, because of poor policing and the ineffective prosecution of people who commit crimes.
"Videos … from the Numsa strike show people breaking down factory gates, getting into factories and throwing out the workers on the job, but there’s little police follow-up. We saw the same lack of policing in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng during the riots and looting in July."
Numsa spokesperson Phakamile Hlubi-Majola says the union condemns unlawful activity.
"We remind our members to adhere to the picketing rules because engaging in criminal activity only undermines their cause," she says.
"Our challenge is that police are heavy-handed with picketers. The police forget their job is not to defend the employer but to defend the public, including our members. Numsa has lodged a case with the Independent Police Investigative Directorate because the police shot a worker and used excessive force."
The FM sent questions to national police spokesperson Brig Vishnu Naidoo, but he did not respond.
"Private security guards are probably the worst perpetrators, because they know nothing about picketing rules. So they shoot without bothering to check that Numsa members may be picketing," says Hlubi-Majola.
The level of violence was close to that seen at Marikana, says Johann Preiss, collective bargaining co-ordinator of the Consolidated Employers Organisation.
"The Numsa strike rates an eight, relative to the 10 of Marikana, for the potential for loss of life and serious injury," he says.
"I don’t think this strike is at the level of Marikana. But it can be a very volatile situation, especially if employers are not moving in the eyes of the union."
The 2012 strike in the platinum mining industry lasted about five weeks. Police shot dead 34 people at Marikana on August 16 that year, and before that, strike-related violence led to the death of 10 people.
So, how to deal with strike violence? Lucio Trentini, CEO of the Steel & Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa, tells the FM that unions should be required to hold a secret ballot to determine support for a strike.
"Secret ballots are part of the code of good practice associated with the Labour Relations Act. However, as it is not the law, unions can ignore it. Until the Labour Relations Act is amended and balloting is made a prerequisite for industrial action, we are stuck with this behaviour."
Employment law specialist Andrew Levy says strike violence is endemic in SA despite attempts by the government to deal with it.
"The government has issued a code of good practice dealing with collective bargaining and strike violence, and condemning [such behaviour] in the strong terms, but is not going as far as to make it law. The government did not have the balls to put it into the statute because it was probably scared that the unions would go berserk about any limitation on the right to strike.
"The right to strike is one thing. It does not translate into the right to kill, maim, burn and destroy. The government has not taken the strongest stand."
Levy says a feature of strike violence is pent-up worker aggression, which union organisers whip up with their rhetoric. "Workers see strikes as part of the struggle against iniquitous wages and capitalist employers."
Trentini says violence and intimidation are worrying SA phenomena.
"We see it in all forms of our society, including demonstrations about the lack of service delivery. We saw it in the looting that happened in July in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. So it’s a serious sociological problem that needs some in-depth analysis and discussion."
National Employers Association of SA CEO Gerhard Papenfus says Gauteng’s East Rand and the North West were the main areas of Numsa strike violence. The rest of the country was relatively peaceful.
Papenfus says the previous Numsa strike that had a high level of violence was in 2014. According to his estimation, the current strike’s scope is smaller than that of the 2014 strike.
"The ideological purpose behind the Numsa strike is to force my organisation into the old form of collective bargaining, where agreements that are made are extended to the whole steel industry.
"We took the industry out of that arrangement in 2011, and that cost Numsa," he says.