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« Peter Jennings dies of lung cancer | Main | Why destination inspection is crucial, by Okonjo-Iweala »

August 08, 2005

Huge strike shuts SA gold mines

Some 100,000 South African gold miners have remained on strike for the second day of the country's first national stoppage in 18 years.

The strikers, members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), are protesting about both pay and living conditions in the industry.

Management is offering about 5-6% rises, but the union says this fails to take into account rising gold prices.

The stoppage could cost about $12m in lost revenue a day, analysts estimate.

While the NUM is so far the only union to have downed tools, the Solidarity union is to join the strike just before midnight (2200 GMT).

Most Solidarity members are white and it is rare for it to take industrial action alongside the mainly black NUM.

South Africa is the world's biggest producer of bullion - accounting for around 15% gold output - and the sector accounts for approximately 8% of the country's gross domestic product.

Negotiations

The strike action began on Sunday at 1600 GMT after the NUM terminated talks with the Chamber of Mines, representing the employers.

The meeting that day had produced a higher pay offer, up from the previous 4.5%-5%, as well as the promise of bonuses to the union paid as the price of gold rose.

But that was "not good enough", NUM negotiators said. The union is calling for a 12% pay rise.

Chamber of Mines head negotiator Frans Barker had warned after the meeting that a strike would mean all new offers would be "off the table".

Hostels

A key part of the union's dissatisfaction is that it says the big mining firms - AngloGold Ashanti, Gold Fields and South Deep - have yet to address long-standing problems with miners' living conditions.

Under apartheid laws miners were forced to live in barracks, leaving their families in townships far away.

Even though the racial zoning laws were struck down by 1991, ahead of 1994's landmark multi-racial elections, about three out of four of South Africa's 200,000 miners still live in hostels.

AngloGold Ashanti says there is an average of six men per room in its hostels, down from 12 a decade ago. Harmony says its hostels average 4.2 men per room.

The union now wants the "living-out allowance" for finding family accommodation to be doubled, whereas the mining firms are offering only a 10% rise.

The employers say they are working to improve hostels, but cannot move faster without jeopardising jobs.

"It's a tremendously expensive exercise," Mr Barker told Reuters.

The NUM says the crowded hostels are a breeding ground for tuberculosis.

It also warns that South Africa's Aids pandemic is worsened by the system, since miners far from home are more likely to visit prostitutes.

Posted by Publisher at August 8, 2005 01:27 PM

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