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Impala Platinum's Rustenburg operation could be out of action for another week as an illegal strike continued on Tuesday, CEO David Brown said.

“I can only give you a rough indication because of the fluidity of situation, but it will probably take another week in terms of the rehire process, then more time thereafter,” Brown said via a conference call.

He said platinum producer Lonmin had a similar situation last year when it fired 9000 workers. It took a number of months for that situation to return to normal.

Implats Rustenburg was losing 3000 platinum ounces a day, which amounted to R65 million in lost revenue a day at current platinum prices. The strike had been going on for two weeks.

Last week, Implats fired 13,000 miners who went on an illegal strike on January 30. On January 27, 4200 workers were fired for embarking on an illegal strike.

Brown said there appeared to have been incidents of intimidation and possibly two fatalities related to the strike, although he had not been able to confirm the deaths.

“A number of arrests were made when meetings turned violent today,” he said, referring to public meetings held by ex-employees.

The SA Police Service and private security were keeping control.

Ex-employees were evicted from the mine's hostel on Tuesday after an eviction order was granted by the Randburg Magistrate's Court, Brown said.

“This was carried out by the SA Police Service and sheriff of the court. We are not responsible.”

Implats had said it would rehire workers who reapplied for their positions, on the same terms and conditions as their previous employment contracts.

However, Brown said this was not going well because of intimidation.

“We are looking at starting the rehire process this week.”

Implats was also trying to get the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) involved.

“We are engaging with the NUM to see if there is any hope of them being able to communicate with the workforce... We suspect this won't transpire and 1/8won't 3/8 result in a successful outcome.”

Implats said the problems at the mine started on January 12 when rock drill operators downed tools over salary concerns and refused to involve the recognised union, the NUM, in addressing their issues.

“Our ability to negotiate with this group of employees is being... impacted by their refusal to deal with the NUM,” Brown said.

“A new union, the Association of Mining and Construction Union (Amcu), are exploiting employee dissatisfaction in this regard.”

Brown said Implats had not received any formal demand from workers through any channel.

However, it would deal only with the legal and recognised negotiating body, the NUM.

“This particular situation is not a positive situation for both the company and the workforce,” Brown said.

“It effectively started from dissatisfaction with the NUM in terms of handling workers' requests... the rival union has used the opportunity to infiltrate the workforce.”

Brown urged the workers to return to work as soon as possible. - Sapa