[miningmx.com] – AN 11-day strike at the Rustenburg mines of Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) has ended with the world’s number one platinum producer agreeing to pay voluntary separation packages to 3,300 employees previously earmarked for retrenchment.
The resolution also sees Amplats offer 328 job opportunities currently occupied by contractors to permanent employees – a part of the resolution that addresses a key grievance recently raised by the Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union (AMCU) which emerges from the industrial action a stronger organisation.
The outcome is that Amplats has agreed that no employees will be retrenched.
Of the 3,300 that will now be issued voluntary separation packages, some 1,250 employees will be retained for a six month period in order to perform reclamation functions at the mines affected by the restructuring: Khuseleka 2 shaft, and the Khomanani 1 and 2 shafts.
These 1,250 employees may be offered jobs that could become available in the event of contract labour ending or vacancies created by means of natural attrition, Amplats said in a statement.
“We are pleased that the strike has ended,” said Chris Griffith, CEO of Amplats. “With this latest agreement, no retrenchments will be necessary after the re-deployments and voluntary separation packages.’
All in all, some 44,000 ounces of platinum production, worth about R605m at the current platinum price and the rand/dollar exchange rate, was ‘lost’ at the Amplats shafts while the strike was underway. Amplats said, however, that it drew from inventories in order to supply customers during the last two weeks.
AMCU president, Joseph Mathunjwa, said on October 7 that a key objection of the strike activity was to ensure that permanent employees were not dismissed while contractors, or labour hire as he termed it, were retained.
He declared himself acting in the interests of the wider mining sector as labour broking promoted employment uncertainty and was rife in the sector.
To that extent, the resolution with Amplats represents an important step forward for AMCU, especially as Mathunjwa is thought to have negotiated directly with Griffiths and because the strike action was relatively peaceful.
Amplats said production at the affected shafts would resume as soon as it was safe.
It was not clear the extent to which this, the fourth iteration of Amplats’ proposed restructuring, inflates the cost of the exercise. Amplats estimated in July that the cost of the restructuring, as it then stood, was about R2.6bn, most of which would be carried in the second half of its financial year, due to close end-December.
It’s also unclear whether AMCU’s agreement is enough palliative for the National Union of Mineworkers.
It said earlier this week it was considering joining AMCU in its strike in the wake of a rejection in the Labout Court of the NUM’s claim that Amplats did not follow due procedure in its restructuring consultation process.
Bloomberg News quoted Neill Young, an analyst for Coronation Asset Management, on October 2 that it was better for Amplats to suffer the effects of a strike at its mines than bow to union demands that it reverse its decision to restructure its operations.
“It is better in the long-term interest of the business to take a strike to establish a realistic wage base and to put the company in a profitable position,’ Young told Bloomberg News.
