It is too early to forecast what the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa’s (Numsa’s) new supply-chain-based organising model will mean for it, the future of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the Cosatu affiliates on whose toes Numsa will undoubtedly tread. But the development raises the spectre of yet more inter- and intra-union conflict, which cannot be good for workplace stability.