[miningmx.com] – THE South African Labour Court has today ruled against an application by the Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union (AMCU) to prevent Impala Platinum (Implats) and Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) from communicating with their workers.
The court’s decision will be crucial if a proposal by negotiators and the South African government to lift wages for entry level workers by 16% is not accepted by AMCU as well as the boards and management of the platinum firms.
In the absence of a formal agreement between AMCU and the platinum firms, the latter are hoping there will be an increase in the number of workers returning to work. They have said that electronic texting campaigns have shown there is growing support for a return to work.
“The employers believe that any means available should be used to ensure that employees are fully informed of the position of the companies and the offer that has been made, and that employees should be allowed to make an election whether or not they wish to return to work,” Implats and Amplats said in a statement.
“The companies have been inundated by calls from employees seeking information, and will now continue to communicate with employees on a regular basis,” they said. AMCU’s application against Lonmin has been postponed.
To date, the 19-week strike in the platinum sector has seen the industry forfeit R20bn in revenue while workers have forgone salaries totalling R9.2bn. The latest attempt to break the strike involved weekend discussions with the South African government.
The new proposal – which has not been adopted yet by the platinum firms, is to increase the basic wage at Amplats, which pays the lowest basic wage, to R9,000 per month in 2017, and at Lonmin, which pays the highest wages, to R9,713 in 2017.
This still does not meet AMCU’s demand to reach a basic salary of R12,500 per month in the present negotiation cycle, and all sorts of ways were looked at last week to find money to increase the wage offer, which bogged down at increases 9% and 9.5%.
