THE MINING industry and its workforce would take three years to recover from this year’s strike in the platinum mines that was led by a rival labour group, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said yesterday.
“When we started we projected that we think 18 months things should be back to normality. We are looking now at about a three-year period,” said Frans Baleni, the general secretary of NUM, the country’s biggest mining union.
The mining workforce divided in 2012 when the dominant NUM lost members to the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), after a strike and the killing by police of 34 workers on one day at Lonmin’s Marikana operations.
Amcu became the majority union at Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum and Lonmin, and this year embarked on the longest strike in South Africa’s mining history.
“The madness of 2012 has impacted negatively on the industry, job losses, economy, as well as the future,” Baleni said. “Once we have piecemeal trade unions, you are weaker as organised labour.”
On the goldfields NUM faces losing its majority to Amcu at Sibanye Gold, Harmony Gold and AngloGold Ashanti, as some companies consider job cuts.
“That madness seems to be playing itself at the gold mines because people are being promised that if you join us now, come 2015 we should be a stronger bargaining power and we can get what we got in the platinum belt,” Baleni said.
Last month Sibanye started talks that may include job cuts at its Cooke 4 shaft, where some 2 500 workers are employed. Harmony is considering closure of its Target 3 operation, which employs about 1 500 people.
“In both instances, we try to invite our experts to do a proper assessment of the case made by the company and advise us in terms of alternatives.”
Workers who won raises of as much as R1 000 in their monthly pay in the platinum strike were starting to see deductions from their pay cheques after earlier debt repayments were deferred, he said. “With that we’re likely to see more people coming back, but for us” the main priority “is to stabilise the industry”. – Bloomberg