Mining Weekly reports that a session on retrenchments on Wednesday at the twenty-ninth Labour Law Conference in Johannesburg heard that Section 52 of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) was a ticking time bomb.  

That section states that the holder of a mining right must give notice to the Mineral Resources Minister when the downscaling of operations will result in the dismissal, for operational reasons, of more than 10% of the workforce or more than 500 people, whichever is the lesser.  Aadil Patel of Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr and Professor Pieter le Roux of ENSafrica agreed that the use of Section 52 was a strategy to protect employment and promote transparency, but said it could be applied in the wrong way.  Le Roux pointed out that the Minister’s directives “could theoretically include how companies should retrench”, while Patel added that unions and employees were becoming more “creative and innovative” in challenging the restructuring of mining operations.

• Read this report in full at Mining Weekly

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