The world's largest primary producer of platinum‚ Anglo American Platinum (AGL)‚ announced on Monday it had raised its offer to end the eight-week strike at its Rustenburg‚ Union and Amandelbult mining operations.
The previous offer consisted of a one-off “hardship allowance” of R2‚000‚ a one-off “loyalty allowance” of R2‚000 for those employees who did not participate in the illegal strike‚ and all employees affected by the no work‚ no pay principle would be afforded an opportunity to apply for a payment advance of up to R2‚500.
The new offer consists of a one-off allowance of R4‚500 to be paid to each qualifying employee‚ consisting of a R2‚000 loyalty or hardship allowance and a R2‚500 safe start-up allowance to be paid two weeks after employees have returned to work and have commenced actual work.
If the offer is accepted‚ workers could return to work today.
“We have previously stated that the operations are under tremendous economic pressure‚ which is being exacerbated by the current illegal strike. The return to work offer that has been agreed with the unions and the strike committee will require almost R220 million to fund‚” said Anglo American Platinum CEO Chris Griffith said.
“The workers’ current demand of a salary increase of R4‚500 per month would cost approximately R2.6 billion‚ an amount that is clearly not affordable in a year when the company is experiencing such economic challenges‚” Griffith said. - I-Net Bridge