A violent six-week strike at world No. 3 platinum producer Lonmin has come to an end with a hefty wage settlement that could stir more strife in South Africa’s restive mining sector.
Lonmin’s 11-to-22 percent pay hike deal with striking workers may be a red rag for others in an industry riven by income disparities laid bare by a wave of violent industrial action in which 45 people died last month.
As Lonmin’s miners prepare to don their helmets and head back down the shafts, others are eyeing their gains greedily.
Photo: AFP
“We want management to meet us as well now. We want 9,000 rand [US$1,100] a month as a basic wage instead of the roughly 5,000 rand we are getting,” an organizer with the militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) at Lonmin rival Impala Platinum told reporters.
He declined to be named for fear company recriminations.
AMCU exploded onto the South African labor scene in January when its turf war for members with the dominant National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) led to the closure of the world’s largest platinum mine, run by Implats, for six weeks.
The discontent rolling through the platinum belt has found fertile ground in the shanty-towns that ring the mines.
The communities that serve the platinum companies sit side-by-side in the dusty “platinum belt” — proximity that will make the Lonmin deal a source of jealousy for workers from other mines.
Anglo American Platinum, the world’s top producer of the metal used for catalytic converters in cars, was last week forced to suspend its Rustenburg operations, 120km northwest of Johannesburg, because of the unrest.
Those mines rebooted on Tuesday, but its workers will be tempted by the pay hikes achieved just down the road in Marikana, where 34 striking Lonmin workers were shot dead by police last month in the worst such incident since the end of white rule in 1994.
“The ripple effects will continue to be felt. The outcome of the negotiation at Marikana will likely set a new benchmark for mining more generally and wage costs are set to rise substantially,” JPMorgan said in a research note.
The gold sector has also not been spared, with 15,000 miners at the KDC West operation of Gold Fields, the world’s fourth-largest bullion producer, on an illegal strike.
However, unlike the platinum miners, Gold Fields and its bigger rival, Anglo Gold Ashanti, have both diversified away from their home base and now get half or more of their output from outside South Africa.
Gold Fields’ chief executive Nick Holland told reporters on Monday his company could “go on for quite some time” despite the KDC West disruption.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his