Tag: strike

Amplats miners striking for R16 070 per month

Striking Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) mineworkers demanded pay of R16,070 a month at a meeting at the Blesbok stadium in Rustenburg on Thursday.

This was according to Gaddafi Ndoda, who described himself as a member of a newly formed workers’ committee.

“To us, R12,500 is just a basic salary,” he said, referring to the amount raised as a demand among many mineworkers over the past weeks.

“Anglo is the most-paying (sic) mine in the country, so our demand is different from other mineworkers,” said Ndoda.

He said they wanted “nothing to do” with AngloPlats’ Mageu beverage, and wanted their refreshment allowance to be R30 a day.

On Wednesday workers there complained about the quality of the Mageu, an energy drink made from fermented grains.

He said currently workers were not entitled to a safety and transport allowance.

“We want our transport allowance to be R60 daily and [our] safety allowance to be R1500.”

They also wanted the increase in their living-out allowance to be R2000 — up from R1700.

An “executive committee” of six members representing workers outside formal union forums had been formed and they were expected to take a memorandum to the mine’s management in Klipfontein near the stadium, he said.

While heading towards the nearby offices, about half the workers who had been in the stadium accompanied the committee, singing and dancing, amid tight security.

As in the past week, the police had Nyalas stationed in the area and a helicopter overhead. Amplats security vehicles and security guards were also on alert, and a Netcare911 ambulance was on standby.

Workers carried knobkerries, sticks and whips. Some also carried umbrellas.

It appeared that a group of striking workers from Lonmin Platinum did not join them as hoped.

Amplats said it suspended operations on Wednesday out of concern for the safety of its employees, and said there was no strike at the mine.

CEO Chris Griffith said the situation in the Rustenburg area was volatile, and that people who wanted to go to work could not because of threats of violence.

“Anglo American Platinum has decided to suspend its operations in the Rustenburg area with immediate effect,” he said in a statement.

“The suspension will continue until such time as operations can be safely resumed.”

Amplats’ chairwoman Cynthia Carroll said the company was in touch with authorities “at the highest level” to identify ways of working with government and the recognised labour unions to achieve a swift and peaceful resolution.

She said the company’s Rustenburg platinum operations were already under financial pressure, and the suspension of operations on Wednesday risked their long-term viability, the longer the situation lasted.

A strike at Lonmin entered its second month this week. Workers at Gold Fields’ KDC West mine were also on strike on Thursday. – Sapa

18 dead in Lonmin shootout

An attempt by the police on Thursday to disperse striking workers at Marikana’s troubled Lonmin mine ended in a shootout between the two groups.

A Sapa reporter at the scene said he counted 18 bodies lying next to the nearby Wonderkop squatter camp. The shooting lasted about three minutes.

Police had tried to intercept a section of the strikers gathered on top of a hill.

The strikers were wielding pangas and chanting war songs. Police fired teargas and then used a water cannon to disperse the strikers, who retaliated by firing live ammunition at the police.

The area around the hill, which the strikers had turned into their base for the past few days, was cordoned off with barbed wire.

The strikers scattered towards the squatter camp and the nearby veld.

Police spokesman Captain Dennis Adriao told journalists at the scene police had been “tactical” in their approach and that the situation was tense. – Sapa

South African police shoot and kill striking Lonmin miners

Read also: 18 dead in Lonmin shootout

South African police opened fire on Thursday against thousands of striking miners armed with machetes and sticks at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine, leaving several bloodied corpses lying on the ground.

A Reuters cameraman said he saw at least seven bodies after the shooting, which occurred when police laying out barricades of barbed wire were outflanked by some of an estimated 3,000 miners massed on a rocky outcrop near the mine, 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.

Police officers said talks with leaders of the radical Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) had broken down, leaving no option but to disperse them by force.

“Today is unfortunately D-day,” spokesman Dennis Adriao said.

Ten people, including two policemen, have died in nearly a week of fighting between rival worker factions at the mine, the latest platinum plant to be hit by fallout from an eight-month union turf war in the world’s main producer of the precious metal.

On Wednesday, up to 3,000 police officers, including members of an elite, camouflage-wearing riot control unit backed by helicopters and horses, confronted the striking rock-drill operators, but there were no clashes.

Before the police advance, Joseph Mathunjwa, president of AMCU, which has been on a big recruitment push in South Africa’s platinum mines, said there would be bloodshed if police moved in.

“We’re going nowhere,” he shouted through a loudhailer, to cheers from the crowd. “If need be, we’re prepared to die here.”

SHARES TUMBLE

The unrest has forced Marikana’s London-headquartered owner to halt production at all its South African operations, which account for 12 percent of global platinum output.

Lonmin said it had lost the equivalent of 15,000 ounces of platinum from the six-day disruption, and was unlikely to meet its full-year production target of 750,000 ounces.

Its London-listed shares were down more than 6 percent on Thursday, bringing total losses since the violence began to more than 13 percent.

The Marikana strikers have not made their demands explicit, although much of the bad blood stems from a turf war between AMCU and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the dominant union for the last two decades.

At least three people were killed in a similar round of fighting in January that led to a six-week closure of the world’s largest platinum mine, run by Impala Platinum. That helped push the platinum price up 15 percent.

South Africa is home to 80 percent of the world’s known platinum reserves, but rising power and labour costs and a sharp drop in the price of the precious metal this year have left many mines struggling to keep their heads above water. – Reuters

Strikers set Johannesburg trains on fire

Several train carriages were on fire in Soweto and Braamfontein on Wednesday night, Johannesburg emergency services said.

“Around 9pm we got a call that three moving train carriages caught fire at the New Canada railway station in Soweto,” spokesman Robert Mulaudzi said.

Nobody was injured. Around the same time emergency services received calls about several more train carriages on fire in Braamfontein, central Johannesburg. Firefighters were at the scene.

It was suspected that striking Metrorail workers were responsible for the fires, Mulaudzi said. – Sapa