The Underground Officials' Association (UOA) was a trade union representing supervisors in the mining industry in South Africa.
It accepted only white workers, and prided itself on not operating a closed shop and never holding a strike.
[1] By 1980, it had 14,462 members, and that year, it began accepting all workers holding supervisory positions in the mines.
[2] In 1983, the union finally agreed with the government to open all mining supervisory positions to non-white workers.
[3] It had obtained a closed shop agreement, but deputy general secretary Koos Bezuidenhout believed that this would not endure, and that it should merge with other unions in the industry.