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Gold sector wage talks referred to CCMA

Johannesburg - Pay talks in the gold mining industry will move to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), unions and gold producers said on Wednesday.

"The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), Solidarity, and Uasa have declared a dispute, and have referred the matter to the CCMA for mediation," Charmane Russell said on behalf of gold producers.

"This will give the parties an opportunity to engage, with the assistance of a mediator, for around a 30-day period."

The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), the fourth union involved in the negotiations, has requested additional information, to which the producers would respond, she said.

Last week the producers, AngloGold Ashanti, Evander Gold Mine, Gold Fields, Harmony Gold, Rand Uranium, Sibanye Gold, and Village Main Reef, proposed a 4% pay rise for workers in the opening round of this year's wage talks.

Ahead of talks on Wednesday, NUM spokesperson Lesiba Seshoka said the 4% increase was not enough.

"We have rejected that 4% with the contempt that it deserves."

The NUM wanted surface workers to earn a minimum of R7 000 a month and underground and open-cast workers R8 000 a month.

During Wednesday's negotiations, the producers raised the increase to 5% in respect of wages and benefits.

"The effect of this offer would be to raise the guaranteed pay of entry-level underground employees for major gold-producing companies to at least R9 000 per month," Russell said.

"These figures include basic wage, living-out allowance, medical benefit and retirement contribution and exclude statutory benefits, other allowances, profit share, overtime and bonuses."

Despite the increase, three of the four negotiating unions declared a dispute.

"We are referring this to the CCMA immediately. If we don't agree there, we will strike," Seshoka said.

Solidarity general secretary Gideon du Plessis said in a statement the union believed wage negotiations in the gold industry this year would gain momentum only if a facilitation process was followed.

"The Chamber of Mines announced today that it would improve its initial wage offer of only 4% for employees in the gold industry with a mere one percentage point and therefore we believe that facilitating should take place sooner rather than later to give negotiations a boost," he said.

Wednesday's declaration by the unions means that two-week-old salary talks, labelled as the toughest since the end of apartheid in 1994, will now be held up by a 30-day process of mediation that could end in an industry-wide strike.

If wage bills rise dramatically, the gold companies could be forced to make further job cuts - a prospect that is causing concern in the ANC as it prepares for an election in the first half of 2014.

Rising worker militancy has coincided with soaring costs and falling prices that have prompted producers such as AngloGold Ashanti to shed a total of 14 000 jobs over the past two years.

A one-day strike in the gold industry costs producers R349m in lost revenue and mineworkers R100m in lost wages because of the sector's no-work, no-pay rule.


 
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