Africa-Press – South-Africa. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has labelled Sibanye-Stillwater’s plans to restructure its gold operations, and potentially retrench more than 2 000 workers, as a “form of punishment” for a three-month strike at its operations this year.
The union, in a statement released on Wednesday afternoon, said it was shocked to hear that the company was mulling the retrenchments of employees at Beatrix 4 shaft in the Free State and Kloof 1 and 2 plants in Gauteng.
‘Capitalist barbarism’
“The NUM cannot dismiss the fact that this is a form of punishment for the strike period in which gold sector workers, through their unity, secured a reasonable victory in terms of wages and working conditions. This is capitalist barbarism at its best,” the union said.
“Although we are deeply shocked by such a decision, we are not surprised as we expected such a kind of brutal and heartless behaviour coming from Sibanye-Stillwater. It is a well-known fact that this company does not care much about its employees. What matters most to them is profit. Sibanye-Stillwater is today coming up with all sorts of excuses just to merely punish the workers.”
Sibanye on Tuesday announced its gold division had launched a formal consultation process in terms of section 189 of the Labour Relations Act to consider measures to avoid and mitigate possible retrenchments and look for alternatives to the potential cessation or downscaling of operations and associated services at the gold operations in question.
The company said possible retrenchments could affect 1 959 employees and 465 contractors.
NUM said it believed Sibanye plans to repurpose Beatrix 4 to mine uranium with an intention to use subcontractors.
Sibanye has flagged its interest in exposure to uranium as it expects demand for the chemical element, which is critical for nuclear power generation, will continue to grow amid global decarbonisation efforts.
Sibanye spokesperson James Wellsted, told News24 the company was exploring the opportunity to mine uranium at Beatrix 4 because – with higher prices – an economic case might be made for it now.
“We’re not sure whether it will come to fruition [or] whether it will be viable … But essentially, the gold mining part of it has now reached the end of its life … we can’t continue to absorb losses.”
NUM said it would in the meantime go through the served notice since the purpose of the section 189 consultation process is to engage in a meaningful joint consensus-seeking process in an attempt to avoid job losses.
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