Following the breakdown of negotiation between mining unions and the Chamber of Mines (CoM); Gold Fields Ltd. has issued an ultimatum to about 15,000 workers erring workers engaged in illegal strike, to resume work by 14:00 on Thursday, October 18 at its Kloof Driefontein Complex (KDC) West and Beatrix plants or face immediate dismissal from work. The ultimatum however, does not apply to the 8,500 KDC East miners who went on strike on Sunday.
Gold Fields CEO, Nick Holland in a conference call with journalists at Johannesburg yesterday said the company would be left with no choice but to dismiss more than 15,000 of the 23,500 striking workers if they failed to return to work.
“We are now in the unfortunate position where we have exhausted all reasonable and legal alternatives. We are now left with no option but to protect people, assets, and business,” Holland said.
The JSE-listed gold miner company has lost more than 65,000 ounces of gold production amounting to 1.2 billion rand ($136 million) in revenue so far.
The illegal strike which has lasted nearly two months could put the future of Gold Fields’ South African operations at risk and lead to job losses.
“Every day that the operations stand idle, further infrastructural damage takes place and working places become more unsafe, thereby requiring costly rehabilitation and time-consuming maintenance to ensure the safety of employees when normal operations resume,” Holland said.
The gold miner’s CEO also stated that while some miners have started returning to work at Beatrix mine on Tuesday, it’s too early to say whether the strike there has ended. At KDC West there was no sign of miners back on the job.
The company yesterday applied a court injunction to declare a stoppage by about 8,500 illegal.
Last week, Labour unions rejected an offer by Gold Fields, AngloGold and Harmony to raise pay by an average 3 percent, in addition to increases of 7.5 – 10 percent already awarded this year.
Miners who returned to work by the deadline would benefit from an agreement reached under the auspices of the Chamber of Mines “notwithstanding that the offer has expired”, Mr Holland said on Tuesday.
South Africa mines like AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (ANG) and Harmony Gold Mining Co. have also been hit by stoppages as workers demand higher pay increases than those labor unions secured.
A similar action to be taken by Gold Field was done by Anglo American Platinum Ltd. (AMS), which fired 12,000 on Oct. 5. AngloGold has had all of its South African mines inactive by strikes since at last Sept. 25, costing the company about 90,000 ounces of lost production so far.
Holland told analysts and reporters that lawlessness and violence have increased. He gave the instance of strikers invading and ransacking a police station in Westonaria over the weekend while late Monday, a driver of a company vehicle was stabbed and his vehicle set alight.
Security personnel attending to the scene were fired on with live ammunition, he said.
Holland therefore call on all parties to end this “infamous episode in our labour relations history” as failure to do so could have unimaginable consequences, not only for the mining industry, but for the whole of South Africa.
In a related development, illegal strike at Kumba Iron Ore’s Sishen mine in South Africa ended on Tuesday after police arrested 40 miners while other mining firms threatened mass dismissals to try to halt the unrest.
