[miningmx.com] – ANGLO American Platinum (Amplats) CEO, Chris Griffith, said a wage settlement was imminent with the Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union (AMCU), but he warned job losses at the firm’s Rustenburg shafts were unavoidable owing to the ten-week strike.
“It feels to me like we’re entering the settlement zone,’ he said at a press briefing at the group’s offices in Johannesburg. “The indication is that there’s pressure on everyone which is the right time to get a settlement,’ Griffith said.
“This is the second month that employees have received zero pay. 25,500 people have got zero pay slips,’ he said. Griffith said on February 14, during Anglo American’s full-year results presentation, that a wage settlement was imminent as workers faced the first month without pay.
Earlier this week, however, the platinum producers issued a statement saying that the strike had entered unprecedented territory. There appears to be no sign of entente from AMCU which on March 17 said it intended to intensify the strike action.
Joseph Mathunjwa, AMCU president, said he would ask workers in the gold and coal sectors to form a secondary strike – a development labour experts told BDLive was unlikely. Mathunjwa also said union marches to parliament and the US Embassy were planned.
In earlier utterances, Mathunjwa has said the company’s wage demands had been “written in blood’ in a reference to the events at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in August 2012 in which 34 miners were shot dead in a single day by security forces during a protest over wages. That day enabled AMCU to form a union, Griffith said.
However, Griffith said there was evidence AMCU members wanted to return to work. He also rejected the view that AMCU had entered a place of no return and that it was not facing extinction if it failed to extract its R12,500 per month demand for workers.
“I don’t think 9% would be a failure for AMCU,’ said Griffith referring to the upper-end of the wage offer set down by Amplats, and its counter-parties Lonmin and Impala Platinum (Implats).
“I don’t think that would be the demise of AMCU. There is still a case for AMCU that they have opened a different type of dialogue in the mining industry,’ said Griffith. AMCU could accept a wage offer in which R12,500 per month basic salary was awarded to all workers over time.
Yet damage had been inflicted as a result of the strike. About a third of annual production at Rustenburg had been lost, and although Amplats continued to supply customers – it was producing at 60% of total capacity – the Rustenburg operations were unlikely to make a profit.
Asked if some job losses were inevitable, Griffith responded: “We have got to a point where job losses have become inevitable. We have to find different profile for narrow reef mining’.
Some 7,500 jobs were restructured at the Rustenburg mines last year in an effort to make the sections profitable.
Griffith added that an extended strike could leave Amplats with no option but to shut the mine. Commenting on Rustenburg’s likely loss-making position, he said: “The longer this continues, the longer that position is.
“At some point in time, we have to decide when we should shut down Rustenburg. The same goes for union mine. Even before mechanisation, we are looking at operations as they stand that have a real likelihood of losing jobs’.
“If Rustenburg is not profitable in the next two years, we may have to limit our losses. We could enter into section 189 notices with unions [notice to restructure all jobs], which is irrespective of strike,’ said Griffith. “We will consider our options,’ he said.
Restructuring would begin at Amplats’ Union mine, which the group already said was vulnerable, followed by Rustenburg
“Ultimately, if this continues longer, then we would look at Dishaba and Tumela. You could expect the company to look at those options. We haven’t started anything yet, but we are thinking about it. We are doing all the homework now.’
