More than 60,000 South African gold miners began resuming work last night after a 48-hour strike as they accepted an eight per cent pay increase from companies including AngloGold Ashanti Limited and Sibanye Gold Limited.
The increase to 5,400 rand ($540) a month for entry-level pay is 33 per cent below the 8,000 rand demanded by the National Union of Mineworkers, which represents two-thirds of gold miners.
Bloomberg News reported on Sunday, that the offer has been accepted by most NUM members, except those working at some of Harmony Gold Mining Company’s mines, spokesman LesibaSeshoka said.
Agreeing to the proposal brings nearer the end of a strike that may have cost the industry as much as 349 million rand ($34m) a day in sales, according to the Chamber of Mines, which represents companies.
The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, an NUM rival that speaks for 20 per cent of the industry’s 107,000 gold employees, is yet to see the offer and is meeting September 8 to discuss its response, President Joseph Mathunjwa said.
The AMCU has asked for 12,500 rand a month.
The wage deal is “a little more than employers would have preferred,” the chamber’s chief negotiator, ElizeStrydom, said in the statement.
“The agreement has helped us prevent a longer period of damaging industrial action and remains a reasonably balanced outcome in terms of affordability and jobs preservation.”
“The workers themselves are saying they are happy,” Seshoka said.
Employees who are not entry-level or rock drill operators will receive a 7.5 per cent increase backdated to July 1, the chamber said in an e-mailed statement.
Inflation-linked increases from July 2014 and a housing allowance increase to 2,000 rand from 1,640 rand are also included in the agreement, the chamber said.
South Africa’s annual consumer price inflation rate was 6.3 per cent in July, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Sibanye CEO Neal Froneman said any increase above CPI isn’t sustainable in the long-run on August 13.
AngloGold’s six mines reported normal shifts, according to the NUM’s Seshoka and an update posted on the chamber’s website. The company is focusing on resuming output safely, it said in a statement. Two of Sibanye’s three sites are operating today and the remaining mine will resume operations this evening, spokesman James Wellsted said.