AMCU extracts 3-year platinum wage deal

[miningmx.com] – SOUTH African platinum producer, Impala Platinum (Implats), said it was hopeful of receiving miners as early as this week, but warned that it first had to get the signature of the union “on paper”.

Johan Theron, spokesman for Implats, said the Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union (AMCU) had agreed to a three-year wage deal which had been taken through “minor tweaks”.

“It’s 96% the in-principle agreement that we had a couple of weeks ago with some minor tweaks. The important thing now is for AMCU to sign the agreement and we can then make a formal announcement,” Theron said.

The adjustments include an agreement that platinum firms would provide ad hoc financial assistance to miners for transport and food, and a debt holiday, rather than paying a one-off R3,000 return-to-work incentive.

There is also an agreement to pay more cash up front in the basic package rather than increasing it gradually over time, said Theron.

The in-principle agreement, which was unveiled on June 12, was that A and B band employees would receive R1,000 more for the first two years, and then R950/month more in the subsequent three years. Since the new agreement is over three years, it remains to be seen how the fine detail will affect platinum firms.

Theron said additional demands AMCU lodged last week, which the platinum firms calculated would add another R1bn to the wage bill, were “not so bad when put down on paper” and there were “ways of working around them”.

AMCU had opposed the freeze on the housing allowance, and wanted a standstill on retrenchments as well as the reinstatement of members fired at Lonmin for breaking labour law regulations.
According to BDLive, the union has dropped the demand there be a freeze on retrenchments. In a report by Bloomberg News, Joseph Mathunjwa, president of AMCU,
said some workers would make R12,500 a month – AMCU’s original demand – within three years.

According to Sapa, Mathunjwa said at a mass rally today: “We are signing the agreement tomorrow. That means the strike has come to an end officially’.

“Platinum will never be the same again . What other unions could not do in more than 20 years, you could do in five months,’ he said at another rally earlier in the day.

Once the agreement is signed, platinum firms will no doubt start to sift through the wreckage left by the strike both financially and in human terms. Theron said it would take three months before full scale mining could recommence.

“People have really suffered in this so we want to get them back to work. It will take two to three weeks to get them through medicals and retraining,” he said. It would then take a further three months before mining could recommence.

There is also the question of how platinum firms, Implats in particular, followed by Lonmin, will finance the effects of the strike. It is thought that Implats may return to the market with a rights offer.

The price of platinum fell about $20 per ounce from June 20 when it became clear an agreement between producers and AMCU was in the offing. It fell a further $10/oz at midday in New York to $1,335/oz as the strike end was confirmed, before recovering.