This news aggregator site highlights South African labour news from a wide range of internet and print sources. Each posting has a synopsis of the source article, together with a link or reference to the original. Postings cover the range of labour related matters from industrial relations to generalist human resources.
BL Premium reports that the long pay strike by the two largest unions at Sibanye-Stillwater, one of the world’s leading producers of precious metals, may mean the group misses out on a commodity price boom as gold production has ground to a halt.
The strike enters its third week on Wednesday. The group’s gold mines, which account for 7% of group profit and employ about 31,000 workers, have been closed since 9 March when members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Workers (Amcu) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) downed tools to demand above-inflation increases. The group responded with a lockout and a policy of no work, no pay since 10 March, a decision that has seen workers lose more than R400m in pay. There has been no production since. A long strike could deprive Sibanye of an opportunity to take advantage of a gold price that jumped from a low of $1,782 at the beginning of 2022 to $2,070, the highest since August 2020. Workers affiliated to the two smaller unions, Solidarity and Uasa are not participating in the strike and have not been locked out. They accepted Sibanye’s final wage offer that resulted in surface and underground workers getting a R700 pay rise and a R100 increase in the living-out allowance each year for three years, and a 5% pay increase for so-called ‘artisans, miners and officials’ over the course of the multiyear agreement. Amcu’s Jimmy Gama said: “The demands are still there, no changes until the employer responds to them.”
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Luyolo Mkentane at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page