BL Premium reports that the indefinite wage strike at Sibanye-Stillwater’s gold operations is in full swing after members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) downed tools during the night shift on Wednesday in support of their demands for above-inflation pay increases.
Sibanye responded by closing down its gold operations and implementing a lockout from 10pm on Thursday, which the company’s two smaller unions said they would challenge in court. The NUM, Amcu, Solidarity and Uasa had been negotiating with the company for nearly a year as a coalition, demanding an increase of R1,000 a month, or 6%. Solidarity, however, later accepted the company’s revised pay offer that will see category 4 to 8 employees getting a R700 pay rise and a R100 increase in the living-out allowance each year for three years, and so-called ‘artisans, miners and officials’ getting a 5% pay increase over the course of the multiyear agreement. Uasa, meanwhile, is still locked in CCMA-facilitated talks with management aimed at reaching common ground, despite Sibanye having stressed that its revised wage offer was final. On Wednesday, Solidarity and Uasa said they would mount legal action to challenge Sibanye’s lockout decision. But, Sibanye’s James Wellsted indicated on Thursday that the company would “obviously oppose that”. He said: “The fact is that the unions have been negotiating as a coalition for the last nine months. Now all of a sudden, there is an intent from them to suddenly break up the coalition. We still believe that we are negotiating with a coalition and we are treating it as such, so hence the lockout to all members of the unions that make up that coalition.”
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Luyolo Mkentane at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
- Read too, Sibanye proceeds with lockout of workers at its gold mines, at Mining Weekly
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page