[miningmx.com] – IMPALA Platinum (Implats) said that it would increase
wages, especially for lower-ranked employees, and review its wage structures in an
effort to restore peace and stability at its South African mines.
The wage improvement comes on a difficult day for South Africa’s mining industry,
and the economy in general.
Earlier today, Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) said that it would start a process
that could see 23,000 miners dismissed at its Rustenburg mining operations.
Then, just as the market closed, ratings agency Moody’s said that it had downgraded
South Africa’s government bond rating to Baa1 from A3, based on its fears about
policy changes at the ANC’s Mangaung conference in December.
The ratings agency also had doubts about Government’s ability to solve the country’s
socio-economic problems. The outlook remained negative, it said.
Terence Goodlace, CEO of Implats, said that the company would implement a market
adjustment for its employees, adding 4.8% to its wage bill.
“The overriding imperative for all stakeholders should be to ensure peace, stability
and order, and in so doing, create an environment for safe production,’ said Goodlace
in a statement to the JSE.
This is the third time that Implats has agreed to improve wages for its employees
over the last 12 to 18 months.
“The wage adjustment supports this imperative and our long-term strategy to
establish a new multi-union industrial relations dispensation in our operations while
moving towards a centralised wage engagement process for the platinum mining
industry,’ Goodlace said.
The company also underlined its earlier commitment to a full wage benchmarking
exercise with the emphasis on lower-level employees. The market adjustments will be
implemented on 1 October 2012, it said.
Commenting on South Africa’s ratings downgrade by Moody’s, Peter Attard Montalto, a
director of Nomura International’s and an emerging markets economist, said that the
downgrade was based on the fact that Moody’s didn’t think that the state has as much
capacity to solve the country’s socio-economic challenges as they first thought.
“As the strikes in South Africa spread both within the mining industry and to
elsewhere in the economy, we think that the prospect for further downgrades from
other agencies remains very high,’ said Montalto.
Policy direction at Mangaung, which had the potential to entrench “further policies
which harm competitiveness like further state involvement in the economy, mining
taxes etc’ would also influence further downgrades, he said.
