26 February 2008
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has maintained its position that it will not discuss retrenchment with any particular company which argues power outages as their reason for cutting jobs.
“The NUM is aware of mining companies, Goldfields in particular, who are trying to come up with — and (we) would at all cost reject — any proposals that seek to render people unemployed,” says Lesiba Seshoka NUM national spokesperson.
According to Seshoka, NUM have frequently urged companies, Eskom and government to come into discussions to prevent job-shedding and companies argued that everything was going well.
“The NUM will take to the streets if companies carry out their retrenchment threats,” says Seshoka.
“During this month we have been receiving 90% of the usual (amount of electricity) and we have advised the market and the public that we could have to close certain shafts, with a possible risk of some jobs being lost,” says Andrew Davidson, Gold Fields spokesperson.
Yesterday Gold Fields gold mining group announced that the current electricity crisis puts 6 900 Gold Fields jobs at risk.
Davidson further elaborates that 4900 of these jobs would be at Kloof and Driefontein gold mines the other two thousand is at South Deep gold mine.
“We are still having talks with NUM and other unions about how we can minimize the impact on employees. We will look at early retirement, voluntary retrenchment and contractor replacement,” says Davidson.
The company says that gold production for the existing quarter is forecast to drop by between 20% and 25% against the December quarter.
According to Frans Baleni, NUM General Secretary the matter will be discussed at COSATU’s central executive committee meeting this week.
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