Sibanye Stillwater issues section 189 notice – AMCU strike must end now because of life and job losses

14 February 2019

Gideon du Plessis, General Secretary of Solidarity, said that the section 189 notice issued by Sibanye Stillwater today which could lead to 6 678 (contractors included) job losses, did not come as a surprise. In June 2018, Sibanye had already indicated at the start of the salary negotiations that an unsatisfactory wage settlement could lead to thousands of job losses. The result in the end was that the trade unions Solidarity, Uasa and Num, after three months of intensive negotiations, signed a wage agreement towards the end of last year with Sibanye with the aim of limiting job losses, or to prevent the losses.

According to Du Plessis, it is regrettable that AMCU’s competent negotiators were replaced after three months of negotiations by new negotiators who did not even want to consider the sustainability of the gold sector and especially Sibyane, and clearly had ulterior motives. “The result was a destructive strike which has been going on since 21 November 2018,” Du Plessis said.

According to Du Plessis, the leadership teams of Solidarity and Num warned AMCU just after the strike commenced not to strike because of the imminent catastrophic results on all workers. “However, our appeals were not taken seriously, and the sad irony is that it is now mainly AMCU members who will be hit the hardest by the retrenchments,” Du Plessis said.

Du Plessis indicated further that it is mainly AMCU members who are working at the shafts operating at a loss and that these members have already lost three months’ salaries because of the strike. “If we use the multiplying factor of an average of 10 dependants per mineworker, AMCU has now dumped thousands of people in poverty. Apart from the job losses, a number of people have already been murdered and numerous houses were burnt down, which is directly related to the strike,” Du Plessis added.

Solidarity once again appeals to AMCU’s leadership team to, together with Eskom, stop being the biggest job destroyer in the mining sector and to end the strike. “The trade unions in the mining sector will rather have to sit side by side during the retrenchment consultations to find alternatives and solutions to prevent retrenchments, or at least limit them,” Du Plessis concluded.

Issued by Francois Redelinghuys, Spokesperson, Solidarity, 14 February 2019