Publications
Partners
Cape Town - More trouble may be brewing on the platinum belt.
According to reports from monitors working for the Benchmarks Foundation, several thousand workers at Lonmin [JSE:LON] shafts who were employed by companies contracted to Lonmin have not received their papers to sign on for work.
Nor have they apparently heard anything about their back pay,” said Benchmarks chief researcher David van Wyk.
Fears are now being expressed that this may amount to “backdoor retrenchment”, with only directly employed workers being rehired and given back pay to July last year.
According to one report, temporary site offices of at least one contracting company disappeared at the weekend.
It is estimated that as many as 10 000 of the workers at Lonmin were employed through what are, in effect, labour brokers.
The contracting companies are hired by the mining houses to provide labour for which the mining houses pay the going rates, including bonuses, to the contracting companies. These companies are then responsible for the pay of the contracted workers.
Trade unions have long complained about this “arm’s length” employment practice. It forms part of the call to ban labour brokers.
Reuters reported on Monday that Amplats' parent Anglo American [JSE:AGL] has signalled its intention to possibly dispose of some of its aging platinum assets in South Africa and Britain's Sunday Times reported it had put some of them up for sale in a move by Chief Executive Mark Cutifani to dispose of underperforming assets.
* Terry Bell is an independent political, economic and labour analyst. Views expressed are his own. Follow him on twitter @telbelsa
According to reports from monitors working for the Benchmarks Foundation, several thousand workers at Lonmin [JSE:LON] shafts who were employed by companies contracted to Lonmin have not received their papers to sign on for work.
Nor have they apparently heard anything about their back pay,” said Benchmarks chief researcher David van Wyk.
Fears are now being expressed that this may amount to “backdoor retrenchment”, with only directly employed workers being rehired and given back pay to July last year.
According to one report, temporary site offices of at least one contracting company disappeared at the weekend.
It is estimated that as many as 10 000 of the workers at Lonmin were employed through what are, in effect, labour brokers.
The contracting companies are hired by the mining houses to provide labour for which the mining houses pay the going rates, including bonuses, to the contracting companies. These companies are then responsible for the pay of the contracted workers.
Trade unions have long complained about this “arm’s length” employment practice. It forms part of the call to ban labour brokers.
Reuters reported on Monday that Amplats' parent Anglo American [JSE:AGL] has signalled its intention to possibly dispose of some of its aging platinum assets in South Africa and Britain's Sunday Times reported it had put some of them up for sale in a move by Chief Executive Mark Cutifani to dispose of underperforming assets.
* Terry Bell is an independent political, economic and labour analyst. Views expressed are his own. Follow him on twitter @telbelsa
