Read this article in:
14 July, 2008
ICEM affiliate National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) of South Africa last week declared wage disputes with three mining houses, DeBeers, Exxaro Resources, and Kumba Resources’ Sishen Iron Ore mine. The wage dispute filings come just days after NUM announced that it would take industrial action at Gold Fields’ four mines in August.
The world’s fourth largest gold producer, Gold Fields, has let safety lapse in South Africa, accounting for 23 of the country’s 87 mining deaths between January and June, 2008.
In late June, NUM and diamond miner DeBeers agreed on salary adjustments for 2008 of 12%. But the company pulled the offer and “put forward a different draft that spoke a different language,” said the NUM. DeBeers offered 11% over a two-year period, an obvious slight to miners, with run-away inflation in South Africa with due to rising food and fuel prices.
The two sides will meet on 21 July before the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration (CCMA) in an effort to resolve the dispute. If agreement is not reached, some 6,000 miners at six DeBeers operations will then take industrial action.
The dispute at Exxaro’s three coal mines is over wage disparities between the collieries that are both inside and out of the Chamber of Mines. NUM is also seeking to establish minimum wage levels. Exxaro is majority owned by private equity company Main Street, with AngloAmerican Plc. holding 9.84%.
At the Sishen Iron ore mine, where 4,000 miners are employed, the dispute is over wages promises that have not been met.
But the continuing story in the South African mining industry revolves around safety. The NUM held a Safety Imdaba from 3-4 July in Boksburg. There, NUM Health and Safety Chairman Peter Bailey stated bluntly, “We need to have the same passion about safety as we did in defeating apartheid.”
NUM's Peter Bailey
The summit caused South African Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica to call on the nation’s Justice Ministry to join it in investigating and then prosecuting companies negligent over safety. Despite 1,500 workers dying in the mines in the past five years, the Justice Ministry has not taken up a single prosecution case. A new Mine Health and Safety bill is under consideration in South Africa’s Parliament. It is intended to mandate stricter enforcement measures, and impose harsher fines on those responsible for safety lapses.
At Gold Fields, the company experienced 15 mining deaths between late April to early May at its South Deep and Driefontein mines. And then on 29 June at its 15,000-worker Kloof mine near Westonaria in West Rand, just hours after the company boasted that it had achieved one million fatality-free shifts, two miners were crushed and died 3,000 metres underground due to a ground shift.
The company’s most egregious accident occurred on 1 May. Nine miners, including two from the same family, plunged 2,880 metres to their deaths at South Deep when a lift cable snapped on a cage that was carrying them. Sonjica said then that the deaths could have been avoided if the infrastructure had been properly checked and maintained. "When you don't service equipment, it will collapse,” she told a South African newspaper.
Six other miners employed by Gold Fields, including five at Driefonteion, had died because of rock falls or earth tremors in the week before.