“You'll Be Fired if You Refuse” - Human Rights Watch

Sino Metals still does not allow us…. At CCS, it’s similar. Workers submitted
papers to join MUZ, but the company instead only allowed NUMAW. No [MUZ]
branch office is allowed there either. They refuse to enter into a recognition
agreement with MUZ, but have allowed NUMAW on the scene…. There was a
point where the workers were so angry that they withheld their subscription
dues from NUMAW to try to be able to join MUZ, but it has calmed down
since…. We took CCS to court as well, and the court decided in our favor. Yet
we still can’t get access. The company won’t sign a recognition agreement….
It has been a long time since we last approached [the company], because we
moved the issue to the courts. It ruled in our favor several years ago, but [the
judgment was ignored], nothing has changed. 279
A MUZ official in Chambishi who has worked to establish a CCS branch, explained further:
At CCS, there are only about 300 unionized workers [out of 900 total]—
those belonging to NUMAW. The rest are not unionized, because the
company won’t allow MUZ, and the workers want MUZ. Previously papers
were filed by workers who wanted to join MUZ, I helped organize this, but
the company then told us that “they were misplaced.” The HR officer has
told us that they are not refusing MUZ, but that the paperwork must be in
order. This has gone on for years though, even after courts ruled in our favor.
Next time, which we are starting right now, we will collect the forms in the
township, and we will hold on to them ourselves. We will not give them to
the company again so that they can “misplace” them. We have a strategy,
we will be more careful this time. 280
Miners at both CCS and Sino Metals expressed a strong desire to have MUZ’s
representation, and had even taken steps to secure their representation before being
threatened by management. An acid plant operator at CCS, who identified MUZ as stronger
on workers’ rights and tending to support the political opposition, explained:
279 Human Rights Watch interview with Charles Muchimba, director of research at MUZ, Lusaka, November 2010 and July
2011. See also Mwila Chansa-Ntambi, “Enforce decent work agenda, MUZ urges govt,” The Post (Zambia), July 26, 2011
(describing an interview with MUZ General Secretary Oswell Munyenyembe in which he “stated that MUZ had faced
significant ‘roadblocks’ in its quest to have the affected mineworkers unionised adding that firms such as Chinese-run
Chambishi Copper Smelter and Sino Metals had even defied court judgments passed in MUZ’s favour to have the said
workers unionised.”).
280 Human Rights Watch interview with local MUZ official, Chambishi, July 14, 2011.
87 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | NOVEMBER 2011