1 September 2013
Johannesburg – Mining giant Gold Fields chief executive Nick Holland’s 40 percent pay hike is likely to have hardened attitudes of unionists representing mineworkers about to strike.
[read more: http://www.iol.co.za/business/companies/mineworkers-harden-their-attitude-1.1571270#.UiRo1jZmiSo]
11 June 2013
Windhoek – Tensions continue to simmer in South Africa’s mining sector heightened by mineworkers unions’ rivalry, as they battle for membership and recognition, and demands for pay hikes by as much as 60 percent.
Mineworkers in South Africa’s gold and coal sectors this past week laid out demands for wage increases of between 10 percent and 61 percent for entry-level miners.
Wage negotiations are just about to start this month and the escalating tension has found an early victim in the South African currency, which last week breached the psychological key 10.0 level against the United States dollar.
20 May 2013
South African mining companies are due to embark on one of their toughest periods of wage talks in the next one or two weeks, with increasingly radicalised unions.
The world’s biggest platinum producing country is hoping to avoid the 2012 wildcat strike action that cost billions in lost revenue and production.
Mining companies are hurting from a nearly 20% drop in platinum prices in the last two years, as the supply disruptions failed to offset weakness in demand for the metal used chiefly in motor vehicle catalysts.
[read more: http://www.newsday.co.zw/2013/05/19/sa-mines-cant-afford-pay-rises-implats/]